Nostalgia #6

Long, long ago, when I was a kid, going to the garbage dump used to be an eagerly anticipated family event. Back then, the dump attendants didn't mind if you plowed through piles of garbage looking for cool stuff. To us kids, going to the dump was like a massive treasure hunt.
There were the regulars, too, people who went to the dump on a routine basis, looking for things they could take home and fix up for personal use or to sell. They collected broken lamps, tricycles, clothing, chairs, hubcaps, knick-knacks, record albums . . . you name it. It's astonishing the amount of stuff people threw away that had nothing wrong with it.

There aren't that many open-air, dump-on-the-ground, garbage dumps left, and that's a good thing. Nowadays the handling of garbage has gone high-tech. For one thing, recycling has helped reduce the amount of garbage thrown away each year. Many dumps have been turned into solid waste transfer stations, where garbage is hauled away. Sanitary landfills now have liners to prevent contamination of ground water. They have systems to collect the methane gas generated by rotting garbage. Liquid leachate is collected and sprayed back onto the garbage to hasten decomposing. Some landfills use gigantic 59-ton trash compactors. Others incinerate their trash. Still others bury garbage with tons of dirt, compressing the garbage so much that they gain an extra 30-40 feet of depth when they scrape off the dirt 6 months later to add more garbage.

New York City produces 25,000 tons of garbage every day, which they send to other states and cities. Americans produce 330 million tons of garbage every year. Thankfully, people are becoming more diligent about recycling. Now that I recycle, I only have to go to the dump once or twice a year, with a brown grocery bag full of unrecyclable/unburnable trash. The rest is recycled. And while I love the idea of being a greenie, I have to confess to a nostalgic longing for the fun and excitement of the garbage dump days of my childhood. Which is probably why I still love flea markets and garage sales.

What about you? As a kid did you know your garbage men? Did you ever go to the dump? Did you ever remove a treasured something from the garbage that your mom had thrown away?

Nostalgia #5

Lesley's comment to Nostalgia #4 reminded me of the time I fell down the stairs as a teen. It was the only time I ever told my mother to shut up and lived to tell of it.

We lived in an old Craftsman style house with a long and steep set of wooden stairs leading up to the attic bedroom I shared with my sister. As I started down the stairs one day, I missed my footing and sat down with a thud. I immediately made a rapid descent, shooting down the stairs on my butt. Bump-bump-bump-bumpbumpbumpbumpbump ...

I landed unhurt in an ignominius heap at the bottom of the steps, where my mom had witnessed the entire episode. All she could do was laugh and sputter like a hyena. When she asked me if I enjoyed my ride, I gathered all my teenaged dignity about me and said, "Shut up!" and stormed to the bathroom to massage my wounded posterior.

At the time, I was too embarrassed to see the humor in the situation, and I resented my mother's obvious glee. I got over it fast, however. Not too long after that, my brother did the same thing, and I was right there at the bottom of the steps to laugh with everyone else.

Do you have an embarrassing childhood memory, one that perhaps haunts you to this very day?

Nostalgia #4

One of my most nostalgic childhood memories was when my sister Lori and I used to go for what we called Walks. These weren't ordinary walks. When we said we were going for a Walk (capital W), it meant we'd be gone for hours, exploring the woods and different neighborhoods, picking blackberries, admiring pretty houses, and talking about our dreams. I always took my turquoise Instamatic camera or a sketch book. We walked everywhere, and never worried about boogeymen. Nowadays, no right-thinking mother would let her adolescent daughters go for walks in strange neighborhoods and be gone for hours.

The worst that happened was the time my sister and I were picking blackberries on a little bluff that overhung a large, briar-filled gully. I leaned out too far trying to reach some plump berries in the briars, and fell face-first and spread-eagled on top of the huge briar patch. Despite being suspended 15-20 feet above the ground by painfully wicked briars, my sister and I got the giggles at the sheer idiocy of the situation. Besides, I looked funny spraddled out on the briars.

Lori was able to push a flat board across the briars and I managed to ooze my body onto it. Then I inched backwards to safety along the board, poked full of a million holes. Had I taken a drink of water just then, I'm sure I would have sprung a dozen leaks.

What kind of favorite nostalgic memory do you have? Did you ever do something idiotic as a child? (What child hasn't!) Tell us!

Nostalgia #3

Today I had a blast doing the sister thing. My sister Lori and I spent the day making and baking. I made a corned beef hash casserole and she made a zucchini casserole. I made squash bread and she made salsa. We sliced and diced and laughed and reminisced. It was quality time. And it fits right in with my Nostalgia Series, because what we did today was build memories.

And boy, were we tired! After spending all day working in the kitchen, we were too tired to bake the chocolate chip cookies at the end of the day. We divvied everything up--each of us getting 2 casseroles, squash bread, salsa, and cookie dough.

I'm sitting here at 10:30 at night, full of good food and happy memories. Do you have happy family memories? Are there certain meals you fix that make you nostalgic? Perhaps it was a meal you loved as a child. My favorite nostalgia meal is meatloaf and scalloped potatoes. Comfort food. What's your comfort food?

Nostalgia #2

When we were little kids, the highlight of the week was garbage day. My sister and brother and I would crowd about the bedroom window and wave madly at the two burly guys who rode standing up at the back of the truck. After they had emptied our garbage can in the alley behind the house, they drove to the end of the alley and circled around, coming past the front of the house. We'd race to the front window and wave madly once again. They always waved back.

One rainy day, we'd thrown away an old umbrella that only had the handle and spokes left--no cloth. After the garbage men emptied our can and drove through the rain to the end of the alley, we ran to the front window as usual, to wave goodbye. One of the men had pulled that old umbrella out of the garbage, and as the truck drove by in the rain he was standing at the back of the truck, holding the skeletal umbrella over his head and grinning like a fiend. We thought that was just about the funniest thing we'd ever seen. How we laughed!

I wonder if he knew how much pleasure that one incident gave our family over the years? To this day, we still talk fondly about it. It seems to me that spontaneous acts like that were a way of connecting with others in a friendly way, without worrying if you were being intrusive or, God forbid, offensive. I miss that. Do you have memories from your past that you treasure?