When I was a child, Stewart was out next door neighbor. Although he was a great neighbor, his story is both bizarre and as unique.
Learn more about Stewart below.
The Trash Burning Barbeque
Ruth and Stewart lived on the other side of our house. They, like Frieda and Walter, were a middle-aged and childless couple. They owned two cats, that were pampered. These were indoor cats, but there was a pet door for the kitties to go outside. Ruth and Stewart had a little shack in the desert where they went on weekends. When I was about 9, I inherited the job of cat-sitting from my brother. When Ruth and Stewart were in the desert, I went twice a day and cooked some meat for the cats. I got paid a pittance for this job, because, “It taught me responsibility,” a phrase I didn’t understand, although, I knew that it had something to do with not getting paid much.
Once a year, Ruth and Stewart got in their Plymouth and drove somewhere for a two to three-week vacation. When they were gone that long, the money started to add up, and I was looking at some folding money, rather than mere coins. But even better than the money I earned, they stopped in Arizona or Nevada on their way back home and purchased firecrackers and cherry bombs for me. These were unavailable (and illegal) in California. They were very generous in their firecracker purchases, and with a little rationing, they lasted for a few months.
On one of their vacations, they were in a car accident and were gone for an unexpected extra week. While they waited to get their car repaired, they knew that I’d continue to care for their cats. To show their appreciation, they brought back a full year’s supply of firecrackers, along with some extra-large bombs that created one heck of a bang. These explosives were awesome.
Every homeowner in the city of Alhambra burned their trash in the backyard. Since the early 1900s, in Southern California, this was the conventional way of disposing of one’s waste. They phased this practice out in 1957 and began using huge smelly trash trucks instead. It replaced one type of stinky pollution with yet another.
Trash wasn’t just burned out in the open. It was set ablaze using an incinerator, purchased from a local incinerator dealer. The incinerator’s bottom section, the firebox, was made of concrete panels with a steel door for lighting the trash and cleaning out the ashes. A more massive steel door was used to load the garbage into the top of the incinerator. A chimney, similar to the one used in fireplaces, was needed to maintain the fire. The common approach for igniting the smoke-belching beast was to toss in some wadded-up newspaper, soak it in gasoline, light a match and hope that the next step didn’t involve a fire engine or an ambulance.
The standard model incinerator didn’t cut it for a backyard aficionado, like Stewart. He wanted one that was a practical work of art. A few tons of river rocks, about the size of baseballs, along with a dozen sacks of Portland cement, were delivered to Stewart’s backyard. He turned them into his Mona Lisa, which looked like an incinerator fashioned out of river rocks and concrete. But it was much more; built into his work of art was an attached barbeque, complete with a grill for cooking hamburgers and fine steaks. If you can’t quite picture it, picture this, grilling your barbeque favorites over a fire fueled by your burning garbage.
Nothing says, “Yum,” like the delicate flavors of meat and garbage blended together. Occasionally, Stewart yelled over the chain-link fence separating our properties — “Ya all want to come on over for some barbeque tonight?” When that occurred, my mom always “remembered” a pot roast cooking in the oven. Stewart occasionally caught us off guard and handed a burger over the fence; surprisingly, they didn’t taste that bad. Sometimes I miss the smell of garbage-burgers — but not that much.
My Observation: If you are looking for humor in your life, it’s not that difficult to find. Finding humor and laughing is good for your health.
Stewart believed that the oil in his Plymouth needed changing every few weeks instead of the customary 3,000 miles. So, ignoring the manufacturer’s recommendations, that’s what he did. He collected the used oil in large steel barrels and stored them in his garage.
One sunny day, we looked over the fence into Stewart’s yard and saw him standing on his roof with a broom in one hand and steadying a barrel of used crankcase oil with the other. He was scooping out the oil from the barrel using a kitchen pot and with the aid of the broom, spreading the used oil on his wood-shingled roof. My dad casually asked, “What the heck you doin’ up there, Stewart?” To which Stewart casually replied, “Oilin’ my roof, Earl. I got plenty of oil so you can do yours too.” “No, thanks,” my dad quickly replied.
Stewart’s misinformed theory was that an application of motor oil would keep the wood shingles moist and they’d last forever. He ignored the counter argument that his house was now in danger of becoming a giant Tiki torch, capable of illuminating the Southern California sky all the way down to the Mexican border. Thank God, Southern California isn’t known for lightning strikes.
One day, my mother looked into Stewart’s backyard from her kitchen window. She noticed an elderly gentleman in their yard, peeing on the short shrubbery near the chain-link fence separating the two properties. The next time Mom saw Ruth (in case you forgot, Ruth is Stewart’s wife), she asked her if she knew that there was some old geezer in her backyard who could not tell the difference between a shrub and a urinal.
Ruth explained, since her parents could no longer care for themselves, she moved them from their farm in Nebraska to live with her. Her dad had dementia, and he thought he was still in his cornfield in Nebraska. We understood the situation, so my dad’s next project was building a solid wood fence on our side of the existing chain-link fence. After Dad completed it, we no longer could see the peeing old man.
My Observation: If you don’t like what you see, do something about it. Sometimes, people take drastic measures when a simple, peaceful approach suffices.