My parents did too, rural Missouri. My dad, being my dad, had a 50 gallon oil barrel that he'd cut triangles into along the bottom to "promote airflow". This made sense but it didn't burn hot enough for him so he modified the barrel. He added 3/4 rebar rods across the bottom to protect the 2 inch EMT conduit he bent for an additional source of air. The conduit blew from under the rebar and bent out to several feet from the barrel which was now mounted on cinder blocks. Of course airflow IS airflow so dad hooked up his leaf blower to it, loaded the barrel up with trash and got it going pretty well before he turned on that leaf blower. The flames were at least 10 high out of that barrel the several times I saw him run that thing, He had another welded 3/4 rebar mesh that he threw on top of it when he had it going good.

Literally the only thing that we could not burn in that burn barrel was diapers. A wet diaper laid on top of that upper mesh would just sit there, the paper would burn away mostly but the absorbent material wasn't even hot somehow. We did this several times, trying to burn my kids diapers but when we knocked the damn things off the top we could pick them up immediately after they fell to the ground. Amazing physical properties and I hear that fire fighting gear has a gel layer as well these days based on that absorbent material. I may be wrong about that though.