In a message dated 8/7/2000 10:59:48 AM Mountain Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<< We also had a garbage pale set in the ground
         behind the house for all organic materials and the garbage
         man (or should I say, "sanitation worker") would walk around
         from the front, take the pale out of the ground and go back
         to the street to empty it in the the truck! (Image them doing
         that today.) >>

During the late 1950s and early to mid 1960s, in the town of San Rafael, just
north of San Francisco, where I grew up, our "garbage man" (a quite
appropriate term at the time), would actually open the garage door (garage
attached to the house), take out our garbage can, empty it into his truck,
return it to the garage and close the garage door.  In fact, I remember many
times when we forgot to leave the door unlocked that he would ring our
doorbell and ask us to unlock it!  What service!

Mike Polk
Sagebrush Consultants, L.L.C.
Ogden, Utah