By John Cleveland
I remember when dumps were actually dumps – big pits where you pull your truck up and throw your garbage in. End of transaction.
When I was growing up, my family had our garbage picked up. On the rare occasion when we had items too large for the garbage men to pick up, we’d have to take them to the dump ourselves. I loved those excursions. I’d get to “help” Dad load the stuff into our pickup truck, and off to the dump we’d go.
The best part came when we got there – tossing things into the pit. It might be a boy thing, but watching large objects roll into a gigantic hole in the ground, loudly crashing into other large objects and breaking (the more breaking the better), well, it was just plain cool.
The years passed. High school, college, I met my wife, we had a cool son, rented for a while. Things were moving along.
Then, in 1999, I took a look around. A couple years had passed since college and I was still in the same place. My job was pretty boring, the pay was low and I wanted more of a challenge. At the time, we were living in western Massachusetts, and there really wasn’t much opportunity for a career-upgrade in that neck of the woods. On top of that, there hadn’t been any dumping opportunities in a while. It was time for a change.
My wife’s father let us move into his place temporarily so we could save up some money for a move. While we were there, I helped out with various manly chores, one of which was… going to the dump! The dump drought was nearly through and I was excited at the prospect of tossing stuff into destruction once more.
That first trip was a bit of a letdown though. As we pulled up to the “dump,” I thought, wow, this place is tiny. No big pit, just a bunch of dumpsters sitting around. Apparently, the modern dump isn’t a dump at all. It’s a “transfer station,” where all the garbage and recycling go into dumpsters, get compacted, and then trucked off to the real dumps.
Since I was a newbie, I was introduced to the head guy of the transfer station – a scraggly gentleman with an unruly beard. Okay, I thought, maybe dumping could still be fun. He explained the rules of the joint. Garbage goes in this dumpster, plastics in this one, metal here, paper there, etc.
I listened to his spiel, nodding politely. Now, I don’t know if he sensed my inexperience with this new form of dumping or maybe there was just something he didn’t like about me because his final words were: “Don’t mess up.”
On our next visit, I saw the Transfer Station Dictator holding court in his pickup truck. There was a bumper sticker on the back window which read, “For a small town, this one sure has a lot of a**holes.”
After a little while, I got another job and we bought a house. Things were moving along again. I thought back to that bumper sticker a lot though. The dump had evolved but I was happy to see that its zen and irony were still alive and well.
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John Cleveland is a graphic designer who has learned to enjoy his weekly trips to the upgraded transfer station. He resides in central Massachusetts. To contact John, please drop a line at brendyn.schneider@hotmail.com
