The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

You can tell volumes about South End history by examining our garbage evolution, sorta like counting rings on an old growth fir or the layer of ice deposits in a glacier. Science, a powerful tool. Well, for about half of us these days….

I still find old bottle dumps on our place — and back in the woods there are ravines that have entire cars, bedsteads, wringer washers, complete antique stores if this stuff wasn’t all rusted half away now. Back in the disco 70’s, we still drove our garbage up to Camano Hill where Frank guarded the official dump, pulling out future artifacts he brought home south of me, most of which are probably still there in a strata or two beneath the 21st century. Quite a few South Enders I know like to keep most everything they ever owned — usually just outside the back door where the nettles and blackberries claim it all. It’s an archeologist’s dream, for sure, someday centuries hence.

When the county closed the dump and sent Frank into an early retirement, we got a couple of coin operated dumpsters at our present location about 1980. Drive up, drop your quarters in, a lid lifted and a piston crunched what you tossed into an oozing pancake. Okay for a few trash bags, but not for, oh, roof shingles or construction debris. Pretty quick we got scales and semi-trailer size bins.

We even got primitive recycle. This was when you could sell aluminum and bottles back in town … and a lot of us penny pinchers did. At the dump you sorted your glass by color and watched out for yellowjackets drunk on stale beer and wine dregs. You had to tear the labels off all your cans, cut off the bottom and crush em first. The trash Nazis checked, believe me. A lot of work to throw away your bottles and cans back then…. Now it all goes into the Omni-Bin, paper, bottles, cans, boxes, all of it sorted out somewhere, somehow, by someone or something.

Most folks now have garbage pick-up, big green Waste Management trucks stop in once a week by the driveway, curbside service, E-Z payments. Me, I like hauling my own litter, oh, about every few months. Otherwise, how would I keep tabs on the island civilization? History, after all, is about half what we take to the dump. The other half is still back in the woods.

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