Behind our green shuttered house, that stood with an unpretentious charm at the top of a small hill, lie a steep incline. It lay just beyond the confines of our yard, and was surrounded by tall trees and brush and bush, like a mini forest. In the days before there was sensitivity to carbon footsteps, recycling, or green living, there it was, a handy, convenient and FREE dump. When the trash would pile up, which it did with great frequency, one of us children would be asked to take it to the dump. Only a two minute walk, we hauled the trash, usually in paper bags, and through it over the edge of the back yard. What immediate gratification to get the job done in such short measure. There were no plastics, no disposable diapers, and no plethora of cleaning fluids. In modern standards our lives were so simple. Diapers were cloth and hung out on the line to dry. Paper bags were reusable for a time and totally disposable. Even meat came wrapped in butcher paper with reusable string tied around it. Our milk was delivered in glass bottles and we ate produce that had no wrappings. Although the dump was like a wide open mouth ready to chew anything we gave it, I doubt it was subject to anything toxic or indigestible. I take that back, that it what I thought until I mentioned it to brother Geoff and he said, "oh yeah, the dump, I pushed a couple of cars down there when I was young." As incredulous as I was I found myself thinking that dump was really a time capsule. How people lived in the 50’s is evidenced by the very trash we trashed. Guilty of reminiscing about the good old days like any senior citizen, I confess to romanticizing the past, but one thing is for sure, we didn’t live off plastic.
Oh my gosh, what a flashback that is. It brings me to my favorite hangout at176 Davis, Maybe I should open a teacake business called the The Shed. There was a swing back there and the infamous Jeff built a obstacle course to sharpen our agility and strength. One day I went out to play on the swing which you had to somehow climb to from an old ladder that lay up against the shed wall that was attached to the garage and jump off the shed roof to get your swing on! Well when my tomboyish talent got the best of me I challenged the jump only the rope on the swing broke and I landed flat on my back staring up at the frayed broken rope with the beautiful leaves of the Hemlock blowing in the breeze. I It took what seemed like eternity for my breath to return to my body. When it did I did what all the gabriel's did when we found the world more hostile than we thought it should be. We ran home and told Mom.
ReplyDelete