By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
These city streets workers were collecting some sort of refuse around Buffalo in 1938.
Buffalo News archives
If we do any trash separation at all these days, it’s usually just a question if something was recyclable. Previous generations had many more options. The men who would recycle various types of materials would ride through city streets on horse drawn wagons similar to the one in the photo, yelling out, “Rags!” or “Paper!” or “Tin!” These men would then offer housewives a small amount of money for their old cloth items, newspapers and cans.
For many, it was a bit of a sport to try to get one over on these early entrepreneurial recyclers. More than eighty years later, my grandfather would still brag about his technique in wetting down just enough area in the middle of a pile of newspaper to give a little more weight without raising suspicion.
“It was a different time,” Gramps would always say without apology as a punctuation to these stories. An extra penny or two during the Depression could have meant the difference between eating or not on a given day.
Even the garbage was more separated. Ashes were collected in most places around the city a few times a week. While today refuse and garbage are interchangeable, for many years, residents were to separate their trash into those two categories. Garbage was anything that would spoil or rot; refuse was anything else.
Indeed, it looks like workers are emptying a garbage barrel into the wagon.
A closer look at the workers on the ground shows their protective eyewear. It also shows the Buffalo streets that, for more than 50 years, were shared regularly by horses and autos.
