17. Ash Pit
When I was little my grandfather used to call me Snicklefritz and jokingly threaten that he was going to throw me in the ash pit.
All city houses had alley ash pits. I can see where mine was and where the one across the alley probably was. But they are no more--and the houses with garages don't even have the foundation left.
But in some places they have ash pits still in amazingly good condition, some of them molded from concrete like this one. And they were ash pits--a place to put ashes from the fire place, the coal furnace, and also, of course, for trash.
Nowadays our fireplaces aren't used (or are converted to gas); the furnaces are on the natural gas line; trash goes in the dumpsters. I am fond of dumpsters overall, having lived in places with roll out carts or bags by the front curb. I like having things hide in the alleys.
But I like that our houses are old enough to have the vestiges of this kind.
2 comments:
we have an ash pit made from bricks, though I have seen the concrete ones in my neighborhood, too. I do love a good alley walk to see what's going on in backyards. :)
We had a coal furnace when I was growing up. I remember shoveling coal from the coal bin (a room in the basement where the coal truck used to dump the coal through a window from a chute) into a bucket and pouring the coal into the "hopper" of the furnace. We had big tong things that we used to take the "clinkers" from the burnt coal and put in a barrel outside. (I think.) I don't remember what happened to them after that.
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