 Unfortunately, I had to remove this rather good photograph of an old-fashioned garbage truck from 1959 because the owner of this image, instead of being flattered that his fame had reached even far-away Australia and despite my having quite correctly attributed the photo to its source, threatened me as follows:
"Machen wir es kurz. Sollten deine unerlaubt von der Seite unsere-alten-zeiten.de heruntergeladenen und an anderer Stelle (z.B. in deinem Blog) geposteten Fotos, an denen ich und andere Privatpersonen die Urheberrechte haben, nicht gelöscht werden, werde ich meine Hamburger Anwaltskanzlei einschalten, die sich speziell solcher Verletzungen (auch im Ausland!) gerne annimmt.
Ich setze dir eine Frist bis zum 2.11.2022." Duzen tut er mich auch gleich obwohl wir uns gar nicht kennen!
What makes him so angry? Is it the cold weather, or the fear of the Russians coming (again)? Padma urges me to visit the (c)old "Vaterland" once more. What, and to meet people like him? I seem to have displayed a great deal of foresight when I left Germany in 1965 before I turned into an angry German myself. 😀 Anyway, you can still see the photo by clicking on this link and moving to the centre picture in the eighth row.
P.S. This silly legal threat is a much better story than my "Garbage in, garbade out!" It tells you everything you need to know about Germany and German people. "Lieb Vaterland, magst ruhig sein!"
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I grew up in a group of tenement buildings, with each building consisting of six flats, and with all six flats sharing one metal garbage disposal tin which was collected weekly. I don't recall ever seeing that one metal garbage disposal tin completely full!
People were too poor to throw things away! Everything was used and used again. Recycling began at home. Unlike these days, when each household has its own albeit plastic garbage disposal bin which is usually filled to overflowing (several of our neighbours even have two bins - no idea how they managed that! - both of which are filled to overflowing).
All this came back to me when I found this old photo from the 1960s on GOOGLE. It shows the exact same metal garbage disposal tins in use in those days, and the manner in which they were handled: two men would jog ahead of the truck to position the tins along the kerbside while the truck, with two men riding the footplate on either side, would slowly follow, then stop to allow the two men to roll the heavy tins down from the kerbside and onto the lifting gear on the back of the truck, then drop the empty tins back along the kerb for a fifth man to roll them back to the front door, repeated endlessly up and down the suburban streets.
The garbage men's dexterity fascinated us kids, and we marvelled at the apparent ease with which they twirled the tins back and forth, their left palm covered in a leather patch to grip the knob on top, while their right hand twirled the tins from the house to the truck and back again.
More memories from the good (c)old days. Garbage in, garbage out!
