Knock, Knock :: August 11th, 2002 ::
We don’t have trash pickup service around here, but we have a local dump, which is open on Saturday mornings. I enjoy my trips to the dump, which happen once a week, or once every other week at a minimum. I enjoy these trips because I’m entertained by the way small towns manage their waste (please note, I’m not sure of the relative healthiness of this fact).
In our small town, our dump is made up of two dumpsters: one for plastics, aluminum, and can recycling and one for cardboard recycling. Then there is the garbage truck, which accepts more “traditional” waste. The truck is exactly the same as the type of garbage truck we’re all used to: it is the sort of truck that carries loud garbage men, and that wakes you at dawn with its hydraulic garbage-compressing noises. This truck is a new edition to our dump.
There is a woman at the dump. She’s short, a bit heavy, and she has close-cut hair, and she wears dark sunglasses. It is her job to oversee everything that happens at the dump, but she also has her “garbage stick,” which she uses to poke back the bulky waste and recylcing that threatens to overflow on the ground and create a larger mess (the cleanup of which I imagine is her responsibility as well). She is one of the reasons I look forward to coming to the dump. I find her stoic, slightly self-satisfied command of her post more than a bit mesmerizing.
As it happens, the lady at the dump had a small child with her yesterday. My sense is that he was her grandchild. This grandchild, who was maybe six years old, who had a shock of red hair, was entertaining himself with an old, medium-sized cardboard box, which he could entirely fit himself into. He would get in it, crouch down, pull the four flaps over, and wait for the lady at the dump to return from making her rounds at the dumpsters. When she got there, she used her stick to pound on the box. She said, “knock, knock!” in unison with each time she landed a blow to the box. To these knockings the red-headed child responded, "hello! Who is it?"
They appeared to enjoy each other’s company, but their interactions never went beyond her knocking and his response. Every once in a while he would pop his head out and say, “hello!” but there was no other variations to speak of. They did this repetitively, and I watched them for two or three more cycles before I finally decided it was time to go home.
