Recycling isn’t a 21st-Century phenomenon: my mother recycled stuff more than 80 years ago.
The garage serv
ed as a garage for dad’s car, and two bins of coal: one for soft coal for the kitchen stove and one for hard coal for the base burner that heated the rest of the house. Upstairs in the barn was the overflow from the attic, and my brother had his clubhouse up there too. That's where we kept our "recycling."
I’m not sure how often—maybe every week or every couple of weeks (I can’t be sure)—an old man with a horse and wagon came through the alley behind the barn. He had a tin horn he blew to let everyone know he was coming, and mom would say "Oh, the Sheeny!” and we would run out to the barn to see what she had ferreted away there. When he would see my mom, he would sing out, “Any rags, any bones, any bottles today?”
Being a family of ten, we always bought potatoes and apples and sometimes corn or whatever produce was in season by the bushel at the farmers’ market, and they would put the produce in a burlap bag. Mom would save the bags and get two cents apiece for them from the Sheeny. Also any rags (clothes that had been patched or mended too many times that couldn’t be patched again and so went into the rag bag), and any large cow bones were worth a penny or two and bottles were too. The Sheeny would pick them over and take what he wanted.
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Erin found this article in the Tucson Citizen (of all places!). If you think of "sheeny" as a derogatory term as it was at one time, this article explains that "sheenies" were commonplace ragpickers in Polish neighborhoods, not necessarily Jewish, Black or any other ethnic identity:
The sheeny man in his sheeny wagon used to be a staple in Polish communities of Michigan.
He would trek down the alleyways with his cart, pulled by a horse if he had the money, or pulled by himself if he did not.
The sheeny man would be glad to collect rags, scraps and odds and ends. Other accounts have him sharpening knives, scissors and tools.
I only know the sheeny man from my mom’s stern admonishments that our car would look like a sheeny wagon if my brother and I kept taping paper on the back windows to block out the sun.
“The sheeny man is going to get you,” was a threat often used, much like the threat of the boogie man is thrown about today.
One account of the sheeny man can be found at wowthathadtohurt.blogspot.com/2007/11/here-comes-sheeny-man.html
The blogger shares her story of how she would sneak things to the sheeny man when he regularly visited her grandmother’s house.
Sheeny men could be of any race, creed or age, although they tended to be older guys with tattered clothing.
I never heard of the word as a racial slur until it was pointed out by a few readers in my school bus commentary (www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/breakingnews/116722.php).
Upon further investigation, I found the word was, in fact, once a derogatory word used for Jews, although that was not the usage I intended.
The word sheeny is of unknown origin and had its heyday as a vulgar term around the turn of the 19th century.
It has since fallen from popularity as a slur, but is still remembered by those who recall the rag men in alleys of Hamtramck and Detroit.
More on the sheeny man: listsearches.rootsweb.com/th/read/MI-POLISH/2007-05/1178062727
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