When I was a kid, for some reason the county allowed a dump here and there for people to haul their leftover unwanted treasures and garbage and leave it behind.
There was one such public dump down the road, off the beaten path a bit where a deep ravine and a shallow, barely-there creek ran alongside the gravel road. It was somebody's private property. I don't know why they put up with it, having a piece of their far-flung farmland defaced like a junkyard.
Everything got dumped there.
Old shingles, broken shingles.
Battered pots and pans missing their handles.
Junk wood, rotten wood.
Shredded tires, mangled bicycles.
Rags of clothes and moth-eaten wool blankets.
Suitcases about a hundred years old.
Dried out paint cans.
There was one such public dump down the road, off the beaten path a bit where a deep ravine and a shallow, barely-there creek ran alongside the gravel road. It was somebody's private property. I don't know why they put up with it, having a piece of their far-flung farmland defaced like a junkyard.
Everything got dumped there.
Old shingles, broken shingles.
Battered pots and pans missing their handles.
Junk wood, rotten wood.
Shredded tires, mangled bicycles.
Rags of clothes and moth-eaten wool blankets.
Suitcases about a hundred years old.
Dried out paint cans.
Cracked dishes and bent cutlery.
Books that yellowed under the sun.
Books that disintegrated in the rain.
Barn boards, broken and useless hoes.
Baby buggies from the 1800s, rusted out.
Crooked wagons and rungless sleds.
If at one time it had been owned, it was there crowding out all the other stuff that cascaded down the edge of the ravine.
Somewhere in all that, there were treasures of colored glass, a spoon fit for a kid's digging aspirations, a vase, a book that survived the rigors of the discard, even a bike tire that could be patched.
Some folks just randomly tossed out their attic's contents in boxes and bags without first looking inside them.
And, oh yes, they always brought a gleam and hope when they were opened by someone perusing the dump.
In my previous travels through parts of the south, I've seen worse things being sold at massive roadside stands, places that people make money, enough to live on, from somebody's old junk.
Books that yellowed under the sun.
Books that disintegrated in the rain.
Barn boards, broken and useless hoes.
Baby buggies from the 1800s, rusted out.
Crooked wagons and rungless sleds.
If at one time it had been owned, it was there crowding out all the other stuff that cascaded down the edge of the ravine.
Somewhere in all that, there were treasures of colored glass, a spoon fit for a kid's digging aspirations, a vase, a book that survived the rigors of the discard, even a bike tire that could be patched.
Some folks just randomly tossed out their attic's contents in boxes and bags without first looking inside them.
And, oh yes, they always brought a gleam and hope when they were opened by someone perusing the dump.
In my previous travels through parts of the south, I've seen worse things being sold at massive roadside stands, places that people make money, enough to live on, from somebody's old junk.
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