A few weeks ago I cleaned out 30 or 40 dump tickets from the headliner of my pickup truck and noticed the price changes over the few short years since we've had to pay to keep America (and Fox Island in particular) beautiful. I found some real collector's items among all those tickets, and I discovered a tear in my eye when I saw a Fox Island dump ticket for fifty cents. Was that only three years ago?

When I was a kid on the Island I don't remember going to the dump very much because our house, which was built in 1890, had its own dump. This dump was a pit hidden in the trees with about a half acre of ivy surrounding it. Now that I think about it, our dump was the prettiest dump I've ever seen. It really wasn't messy and didn't smell because we only put glass and cans in it. The biodegradable stuff (we called it compost) went in my dad's "famous" compost pile where the worms would virtually leap out of the ground as we came near. We burned all the paper, so the "Pit of '90" didn't have too much in it, especially after I worked over the glass with a handful of rocks or did target practice with my BB gun. My family finally hauled three dump truck loads full of over 60 years worth of rusty cans and broken glass to the "real" Fox Island dump about 10 years ago.

I don't know when the "real" Island dump started serving the "Islanders", but the feeling I got when first seeing it was very close to the thrill that ran through my body the first time I went to Disneyland. Although I was fairly young, I could hardly wait 'till I was old enough to drive so I could bring home some of the "good stuff". On a slow, cloudy day in the summer I would sometimes walk, or ride my bike to the dump just to check it out.

There wasn't any sign that said "Dump", "Disposal Sight", "Sanitary Fill", or anything else; just a dirt road through some Scotch broom to a big pit ringed with a few rusty bodies of 1920-30 vintage cars. There were also no other signs with hours, fees, or anything else.

I mentioned in an earlier article that along with the Sylvan store and dock, and the ferry landing, the dump was a sort-of cultural center - actually it was an activity center. Sometimes, while checking over the pit (later it was a bank) you'd have to wait up to half an hour before another soul would show up. There were different types of clientele, e.g., scavengers, rat hunters, and serious dumpers. There was one guy who, for years, hauled junk to his house in a W.W.II truck that he'd salvaged at the dump. In 1967 I flew over the Island and from the air I could see that this professional salvager had literally acres of dump-junk from the Fox Island dump. If anybody needed a part for anything, this professional had it.

Before the county took it over, it became somewhat like a free swap meet, and many were the times I came back from the dump with more than I took, only to be sent back with half of that, and to return again with more than I took back. On a good day I could get enough building material to build a garage to put all the stuff besides the building material in, plus meet with various friends and neighbors.

As the cliche goes, all good things must come to an end, and as the off-Islanders discovered our dump, they came to it like starving rats. They filled it up, burned it, fenced it, regulated it, and finally destroyed it. Another cliche says, "You can't fight progress". Ironically, progress costs $2.00, is closed two days-a-week and some holidays, tires cost you extra and no stumps or brush, plus you feel like a criminal if you are fortunate enough to find anything salvageable.

If there is such a thing as a dump in Heaven, it will surely be like the old Fox Island Dump - a 24 hour-a-day free dump, open 365 days a year!