In the '50's in postwar suburban upstate NY, you could purchase an
"incinerator", essentially a  galvanized garbage can, perforated. My father
perforated a 55 gal drum with pickaxe. The garbage was hauled by a crew of
black men in a stake truck. The dump was where kids went to find 'stuff' or
shoot rats with BB's.
Rural areas tended, even into the '70's to have de facto 'dumps'--usually over
a steep bank along an isolated road. (Where grown-ups went to find 'stuff' and
shoot rats with .22's).
Sorry if the sentimental jurney is out of place.
John Vallely

Meta Janowitz wrote:

> The current thread on Histarch has generated some discussion among those of
> us who grew up in the 40s and 50s on the topic of burn barrels.  At least
> here in the New York/New Jersey area, burn barrels seem to have been an
> almost universal feature of back yards.  [A burn barrel was a large (about
> 4 feet high) metal barrel where a household would put papers and other
> thrash -- and the definition of what was suitable other trash seems to vary
> widely.  The stuff would be burned down once a week or so and the ashes
> left to accumulate until the level got too high for safe burning.]
> Garbage collection was available but burn barrels were used anyway.
> Municipalities started passing laws against burning garbage in the 1960s, I
> think, but does anyone have any thoughts on this practice?
> Meta Janowitz