The old garbage dump

GeologyJoe's video of tossing garbage at seagulls got me inspired. What a Gun-Totin' Babe Magnet he is! He's joined my followers, but I would never join his, in amongst all those 'facebook' women.

Anyway, we got the cottage when I was three, in 1957. My dad was a Crazy German, who absolute had to have a Hut in the Wilderness; they all did. We got the lot before the road reached it, but some of my earliest memories involve the old garbage dump.

It was just an offset from the road, overlooking a scenic gully. We'd toss our garbage in the gully. Every once in a while the local farmer would torch it, and bulldoze it. You should have seen the column of smoke, straight like a pillar, and you could see it for miles. All those juicy organic chemicals going up and just disappearing! Who cared, since everyone was smoking a pack a day, indoors.

The nice thing about this dump was the bears. They would hang around at the far end of the gully, a bit shy of the hunters who would regularly stake out the place. If you tossed your garbage real far, you could try to hit them. They were grateful for your effort!

Then the township moved in and made it a big garbage dump for the town. A ban on spring bear hunting made the bears bold. The mother and her cubs were real close when you tossed your bag, and you didn't want to hit them! Always towards the end of the summer, there would suddenly be no bears! If you asked the attendant, she just said "They're gone.". Oh yeah!! Were we a bunch of kids? Did the bears suddenly go back to the farm?

They didn't do that too long before they eliminated the open dump, and had huge containers to take to a transfer station. They put an electric bear fence around the dump, but still they had to actually lock the huge steel containers, because the bears could lift the lids! Finally, they sealed the holes in the fence, and no more bears.

Ah, the good old days!