Shades of Alice's Restaurant

Last night was garbage night. That’s part of my routine on Sunday nights: watch Masterpiece Theatre, take the garbage to the dumpster. As a Starving Librarian, I decided paying for one of the local trash-collecting/recycling companies to collect my detritus was a luxury I could eschew...as long as I could find a dumpster somewhere. I used to go to my bank, which is around the common (like most New England towns, from Boston down, Gardiner has a park that is referred to as the common – once the common land where livestock could graze), and down a fairly steep hill. I would go at 10:30 or 11 on a Sunday night because there was very little traffic, and I didn’t have to worry about being seen pulling one or two bags of garbage out of my back seat, and depositing them in someone else’s dumpster. I had quickly learned that Saturday night was no good – too many folks still out and about at that hour, trying to have a good time.

Alas, a couple of months ago the bank had a lock put on its dumpster. Do you suppose someone had spotted alien garbage bags inside? I was dismayed when I went down there at my usual time, and found my way, quite literally, barred. What was I going to do now? When I drove to work the next day, I kept my eyes peeled for possible substitute dumping spots. And lo and behold, the apartment house (that is, a large house, that has obviously been broken up into apartments, including having an addition tacked onto the back) that lies just three doors down from me, has a dumpster at the back of its parking lot. So the very next night, I drove down there, and deposited my garbage in the unlocked dumpster. However, a number of windows look out on the small parking lot, and I felt very conspicuous. Even though it was late, there were several lighted windows, and through one I could see some fellow watching T.V.

So for the next couple of weeks I walked the garbage down. But I still felt conspicuous, especially once my shoes hit the pavement of the lot. It’s not like I was wearing tap shoes, but in the still of the late evening, footsteps walking past sound loud. And there were those people in the front apartment, who never seemed to go to bed, and whose windows were wide open.

Mind you, it’s not as though I feel I’m committing a crime (although, as a matter of fact, perhaps I am!); it’s that I don’t want to have to explain to someone what I’m doing, putting my garbage in their dumpster. This is an interlocution my delicate sensibilities shrink from. Back when I was taking my garbage to the bank, I had an explanation all prepared in case anyone questioned me: I just recently moved in, and haven’t arranged for garbage pickup yet (and yes, for those of you in big cities, in small-town Maine this is not a service provided by the town; you have to contract for it.) But what was I going to say if somebody poked his/her head out the window and shouted, “Say, what are you doing?”

Happily, I have now discovered another “public” dumpster. It’s located, interestingly enough, right across the street from the bank, at the edge of a small parking lot that lies next to a building housing a couple of small companies, closed at night. There are always two cars parked in the lot that I think must belong to people living in apartments over the commercial building across the street. At any rate, I feel as comfortable as I imagine I can feel, dropping my garbage off there of a Sunday eve.

And for those of you worried about what I’m doing with my recyclables: I save them up and take them to the Hallowell Public Works recycling center. Hallowell is the little town where I work, and they know me there from the library (they’ve seen me out at the sand trough in the winter, getting buckets of sand for our icy sidewalks). So I’m able to be a good citizen...for free.