Doing the Dump

While we're planning furiously for our Italian adventure, my sister is, coincidentally, planning a move as well. She will be off for the exotic lakeside city of Cleveland. Her house also sold in just three days. Her garage, however, needed a good cleaning-out since her spring kitchen remodel project left assorted remnants of junk.

Friend Sue graciously offered the use of her time and truck to haul away the offal, so last week the three of us loaded it up and set off for the landfill. Once in the truck the discussion confirmed that none of us had ever before been to the dump. This would be an experience; we wondered how badly it would stink and whether we'd see rats.

Driving in as ignorants we were stopped at the gate and the truck was weighed. A price of $7.40 was quoted for the haul and the others began to blame my weight contribution -as the 'unnecessary occupant' - for the high price. I'm sure they would have saved maybe a buck if I hadn't gone along.

A map should have been provided, as we meandered along the dirt road looking for the actual dump site. We passed broken-down garbage trucks left for dead along the way, and further along, a flotilla of huge empty dumpsters lined up like barracks. The road wound around a mountain of bare earth, then turned downhill and finally, in the foothills of the Great Trash Mound we found the parking area and the open dump.

Sue backed up the truck and our suspicions were immediately realized - we significantly raised the estrogen levels at that locale as all the other patrons were quite burly-looking men who glanced at us with raised eyebrows and smirks. The stench wasn't as bad as we'd imagined. And no rats, thank God! We began to unload the junk rather carefully at first, but quickly discovered that we all derived much more satisfaction by scrambling up into the truck bed and heaving the pieces into the pile. In turn, we tossed with vigor and flexed our muscles and whooped as we played shot-put with the trash. It was actually quite a liberating, empowering, five minutes. We felt strong! We were women! We could heft trash! Woo-hoo!

As we scrambled back into the truck, Sue summed up the experience drily: "And that's how chicks do the dump." She quickly added, "...and now we do lunch."

Yes, lunch. We may be liberated but we're still girls.

copyright 2006 Valerie Schneider