Trash

It’s Earth Day, so ...

I'm having a hard time remembering how we got rid of trash in my boyhood. There must have been trucks that chugged along the streets of Enid, Oklahoma, and Amarillo, Texas—but I have no clear memory of them. I do remember the metal trash cans that we put out at the curb, but I cannot see the vehicles that came to pick them up.

I remember, too, that a lot of people (Dyers included) burned some of it in metal barrels in the back yard. I can see Dad dropping it in; I can remember the warnings not to get too close, warnings that my older brother ignored and, with a bare belly, got too close one Texas day and still bears the scar on his belly.

People back then, of course, also burned fallen leaves out in the street in front of their houses—a practice I still witnessed in the fall of 1978 when we were living in Lake Forest, Illinois (both of us were teaching at Lake Forest College).

And then ... environmentalists showed us how damaging to the environment these practices were, and I remember when recycling became a Thing when I was still teaching at Harmon (Middle) School in the late 80s on into the mid-90s. The hero of this enterprise was my colleague Denny Reiser (math/science), who got the school to buy bins for discarded paper for each classroom, bins which he would transport in his truck to a recycling facility in Kent, about twelve miles away from the school.

Oh, I forgot. Back when we were first married (1969), Joyce and I bought at Sears an electric trash compacter. Ours looked like the one in the pic I just found on the web.

We pulled out the bottom section, which contained a sturdy bag—as well as a can that sprayed on the contents an odor-killer of some sort (which I'm sure was safe to inhale); then we would turn it on; there would follow a fierce crunching sound; it would stop automatically (I think). As the days passed on, the contents smelled more and more rancid. At the end of the week we would carry the bag out to the curb (it was heavy) where the truck would pick it up.

Now, of course, we have trash and recycle trucks that growl through the neighborhood each week, and we have separate barrels that contain items that can be recycled, items that cannot. But from what I’ve read I’ve learned that a lot of the "recyclables" are actually not.

Some of our neighbors do not recycle at all, and of course that allows us to feel morally superior—a wonderful feeling that has no basis in reality. None.

FYI: There’s a fine documentary, Trash Dance (2012), by Andrew Garrison—whom Joyce knows pretty well. On Amazon Prime and elsewhere. (Link to trailer.)