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Post by casimira on Nov 1, 2020 21:03:17 GMT
I remember as a child when it was an annual ritual for all the kids in the family to have to rake up all the leaves that had fallen to the ground this time of year. We were taught to put them in very tidy piles out by the street and when we were finished my father would light them and there would be piles of burning leaves. Every household did the same thing. It was perfectly legal and acceptable. (the piles were far away from any structures that could possibly catch fire). The smell was unmistakable and pleasant. I thought about this today as I was raking up all the twigs and small branches and leaves that had blown off the trees from the recent hurricane. I can only imagine the ruckus it would cause and the fire engines arriving within minutes were I to do this.
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Post by bjd on Nov 2, 2020 7:04:44 GMT
Yes, Casi. In Toronto too lots of people raked leaves and burned them in the various residential areas, although it was not as organized as you say for where your lived. I also remember kids walking to school and aiming for all the piles of raked up leaves to shuffle through them.
I too was thinking about the smell of burning leaves while I was gardening yesterday. Not allowed to burn them any more here and in any case, many of the trees here don't lose their leaves. And I just read that mulching them with the lawnmower instead of getting rid of them is good for the garden.
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Post by casimira on Nov 2, 2020 12:52:12 GMT
Yes, I use a good deal of them for mulch in some parts of the garden.
I do have a large cast iron fire pit that has a screened cover which someone gave me years ago. I have used it only a few times when we had some outdoor gatherings and it was really nice to sit around and sip on hot mulled cider and the like. Our property is large enough to accommodate one of these and the screened cover prevents any hot branches etc. from escaping. I wouldn't recommend it for a small yard with houses close together. One party that we had one of our guests got a bit carried away (a closet pyromaniac?) and when I went inside the house to gather something I came out to the yard to see a roaring fire all ablaze. I'm really surprised that the fire engines didn't show up. (I did alert my neighbors before the party that we would be having a party and have a fire pit going).
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Post by kerouac2 on Nov 2, 2020 17:40:40 GMT
I too loved burning the raked leaves when I was little. All of our leaves were pecan leaves and pine needles. The aroma was fantastic. Sometimes we would wrap a few pecans in aluminium foil at the bottom of the fire to roast them. Sometimes they came out just fine and sometimes... oops.
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Post by bixaorellana on Nov 2, 2020 19:33:00 GMT
Yes, burning leaves was a yearly ritual which everyone enjoyed. It made having to rake them up worthwhile. Now I am absolutely appalled that we did such a thing!
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Post by kerouac2 on Nov 2, 2020 20:02:04 GMT
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Post by casimira on Nov 2, 2020 22:27:24 GMT
Yes!!! The house we lived in before we bought and moved to this one 30 plus years ago had a teensy backyard. Barely enough sunlight to have a small herb garden. (Bixa would recall this house and yard). The rest of it was taken up by a giant pecan tree and I remember seeing those tent caterpillars for the first time. They were so creepy!! T. would light them on fire like you describe Kerouac.. The first time he did it I was standing almost directly under it and he yanked me away before the fried creepy crawlers fell on me.
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Post by Kimby on Nov 3, 2020 18:32:08 GMT
I remember my Grandpa dragging his metal burn cart full of leaves across the street to a farm field every autumn and setting it on fire.
The curling clouds of smoke were mesmerizing, and the smell was indeed distinctive.
And on more than one occasion, the fire trucks had to come and douse his escaped fire.
Grandpa is long gone, and so is the field, now a housing development.
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Post by questa on Nov 3, 2020 22:22:24 GMT
One of the pleasures of life I will not experience...Oz trees are rarely deciduous. Still, on a hot day the eucalyptus trees release their vapours and distances reflect blue and the air is heavy with bush scents. During Winter you can stand near the top of volcano Mt Batur in Bali and smell the eucalyptus as it is wafted in by the colder southerly winds.
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Post by mickthecactus on Nov 4, 2020 6:18:10 GMT
Talking of Eucalyptus there was a programme yesterday about koalas being reintroduced to Kangaroo Island and it was good to see a lot of Eucalyptus regrowth.
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Post by questa on Nov 4, 2020 9:02:56 GMT
No-one is happier than my son to see the regrowth and "Koalafication" of the Island. He was in charge of the immediate post fire situation, rescuing 'roos, getting rid of rubber-neckers, dowsing the still smouldering stumps and logs and staying a week on site 'just in case'.
The gold medal must go to the 100s of volunteers who have worked tirelessly to save the animals.Over 6 million animals were killed by the fires.
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Post by onlyMark on Nov 13, 2020 11:01:51 GMT
I remember the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper - Peter Sutcliffe - and the subsequent arrogance and cock-up by the police. All because of a pre-conceived notion by a senior officer that he couldn't be wrong. As often happens it took a stroke of luck by a normal bobby and making a mental connection that caught Sutcliffe. He's now just died in prison. He ought to have been regularly cracked over the head with a ball peen hammer.
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Post by questa on Nov 14, 2020 0:41:24 GMT
Ballpeen, Mark? I'd go a tack hammer...more concentration of impact for less effort, as opposed to ballpeen diameter distributing the force over a wider area with loss of subsequent energy.
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Post by onlyMark on Nov 14, 2020 7:40:03 GMT
Questa, unless you know why I said ball peen, you wouldn't know why I said it - sort of. Sutcliffe killed using a ball peen hammer. At his trial there were eventually seven put into evidence, though there was a claw hammer as well. This is some of the evidence of his - And this website details what some were used for, e.g. a screwdriver used to stab one victim through the eye - www.execulink.com/~kbrannen/evidence.htm
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Post by kerouac2 on Nov 14, 2020 9:30:50 GMT
And yet all it took was covid to kill him.
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Post by bixaorellana on Nov 14, 2020 17:23:13 GMT
I could have gone the rest of my life without seeing Mark's post with the picture.
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Post by onlyMark on Nov 14, 2020 18:44:48 GMT
The claw hammer he threw away over a fence into a factory(?) yard. Someone there picked it up the next day and used it for two years until Sutcliffe during his confessions said what he's done with it. Nobody knew about it until he'd said.
Enough of that though, it's a bit morbid, but I can say that during my training the police response to his murders was a case study for us to consider - into how to cock up an investigation, the problems arising from lack of communication within and between Forces and they way evidence was collected and collated. E.g. twice Sutcliffe on initial contact with police all of a sudden was "bursting for a pee". was left to go and do it and got rid off weapons/hammers/knife. Once, in the police station itself.
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Post by questa on Nov 15, 2020 4:12:10 GMT
I'd heard of the case but not the detail. I apologize for upsetting those of you whom I offended...an attempt at black humour gone wrong.
We had a similar story here with the back-packer victims and some sloppy police work. At one stage the police had the killer with his rifle in a police car, but he talked his way out. ENUF..
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Post by kerouac2 on Nov 20, 2020 16:01:16 GMT
It is almost the season to remember strings of Christmas lights from the past. There were the little bulbs that would get so hot that you could not touch them. The blue bulbs would often burn out first because the paint on them would overheat the most. When you had to replace bulbs, often you did not have the right colour available. When they brought out the individual bulbs that could blink on and off, they seemed like a brilliant invention although they were almost always colourless. And sometimes you had to flick your finger at them to get them to twinkle. They were more expensive, so they were used with parsimony.
The next innovation was the miniature lights like little glass capsules, but they also had their drawbacks. Often when one of them burned out, the entire string would go off and you had to test them one by one until you found the one to change. It helped to have children absolutely determined to keep the lights working (I was one such child) because the parents usually got tired of the routine. In later years, they were independently wired so that the whole string would not go out, and it seemed like the height of technology. Also they used much less electricity and were "cuter."
And then the current version of the ultra miniature lights arrived with up to 20 different twinkle programmes. China has made them super cheap and when one doesn't work anymore, you just toss it and buy a new one.
Of course, I am not old enough to remember using real candles on Christmas trees. There lies madness. By the time one would light the candles on such a tree, it was already time to extinguish them unless you wanted to burn down the house.
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Post by kerouac2 on Nov 25, 2020 15:50:24 GMT
When I was little, our washing machine (which was in the garage) looked like this. i.ebayimg.com/images/g/O5YAAOSwf4lepxD4/s-l1600.jpgI was particularly fascinated by the wringer, which makes me wonder how many young people have any concept of the term "catching your tit in the wringer." It must have been around 1964 or so when the house was enlarged that we got a washing machine in the boxy shape that is still used today.
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Post by questa on Nov 25, 2020 23:02:37 GMT
We had the same sort of apparatus in the laundry...a brick and cement block building which stood alone and away from the house to prevent fire spreading to the house. Inside was a concrete platform into which was set a large copper tank which sat over the fire box. Beside these sat the washing machine. (Fanfare,please Maestro) Twin concrete troughs drained out onto the grass or carried to water plants.It had rollers on top to remove water, called mangles until the makers changed to 'wringers'
"Doing the washing" was hard, hot and heavy work.To handle the clothes we used wooden paddles,laundry sticks and tongs. This was about 1950's. Now it is a 5 minute task...if you can sort out the programs.
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Nov 27, 2020 19:01:24 GMT
We had a tall boxy washing machine that Dad bought when I was born (5th child) prior to that Mummy washed everything manually in a bit tin bath. Mum would trundle the tall boxy machine out of the pantry and place it up against the sink...the wringer was attached to the top and mum used big wooden tongs to pick up the washing after it had been in 'the machine' feeding it through the rollers. The washing machine had a tall metal cone with paddles on it. There was a container on top for putting washing powder in...I remember sitting on the kitchen floor with my back against the warm rumbling machine whilst Mummy slaved away. It used to take most of the day to do the washing. I also remember her boiling up white socks in a huge pan on the stove...and the washboard she used for getting mud out of my big sisters' hockey kit and my brother's football kit... In the mid 60s we got a twin-tub washing machine with a built in 'spinner'...that was massive. I inherited that when Jeff and I set up home and my Dad bought an automatic washing machine 'for Mum' I got my first automatic in the 90s...it was a revelation! I must admit that I quite missed my ancient twin tub...it served us well for about 30 years and never broke down.
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Post by kerouac2 on Nov 27, 2020 19:11:13 GMT
We were lucky to be a non-muddy family -- no major sports and a father with a "clean" profession (locomotive engineer). My brother and I nevertheless made the biggest stains -- grass stains -- mostly from rolling around in back of the house trying to kill each other.
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Post by patricklondon on Nov 28, 2020 14:20:26 GMT
I seem to remember something similar to cheery's mother's set-up, but before that - in the early 50s - I think my mother still used the old "copper" boiler, as well as the mangle. When a launderette opened at the end of our street, there was much rejoicing, and it became my occasional weekend and/or school holiday chore to take a load down or fetch it back. But I can't remember whether the twin-tub came before or after the launderette. It might be that there was a stand-alone spin-dryer at one stage. AFAIK, she didn't move to an automatic till they moved to a flat with one already installed, in 1981. My blog | My photos | My video clips | My Librivox recordings"too literate to be spam"
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Post by kerouac2 on Nov 28, 2020 15:35:04 GMT
Our machine just had the agitator in the round bin and a big drainage tub next to it, into which the drainage hose was hooked. I have no idea if they were part of the same system or if the tub was added separately.
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Post by Biddy on Nov 28, 2020 23:59:22 GMT
Cheerypeabrain - I remember a similar contraption. I used to like to help put clothes through the wringer. Looking back laundry was total workout in those days. That machine lasted forever.
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Post by questa on Nov 29, 2020 0:45:23 GMT
For a while I lived on a farm in the Southern Tablelands of NSW. From May to October the cold wind swept up and over the hills direct from Antarctica. The household was 2 adults and 6 kids...one still in cotton nappies. We did the washing every day, my job was pegging out the wet clothes on the line to dry.After about 5 minutes my hands were numb and by about 10 they had turned purple.I tried wearing gloves but too fumbly for pegs. Eventually I found that the house cow didn't mind me warming my hands in the folds of her ears and neck.
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Post by bixaorellana on Nov 29, 2020 2:11:10 GMT
I too have hung up clothes in the cold, and it's no fun. No fun getting them off the line when they're frozen, either.
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Post by Biddy on Nov 29, 2020 3:44:18 GMT
LOL jeez my family refers to me as Biddy the Washerwoman. I remember hanging out clothes in very cold weather. I still hardly use my dryer. Those old habits die hard!
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Post by bixaorellana on Nov 29, 2020 18:30:24 GMT
I hate dryers and love the way line-dried clothes come out. I use to live in a subdivision with a restriction against clotheslines. Ha! I had fence all around my backyard & flouted that rule. You'd have to be in an upper story peering into my yard in order to see my sheets flapping in the breeze anyway.
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