Conundrum: How Do You Throw Away A Garbage Can?

I grew up in the city. O.K. It was the suburbs, but it was still civilization. You know, that place where garbage trucks come two times a week with those dirty, grimy, wonderfully heroic men who pick up your garbage cans from the curb, dump the trash you’ve gathered for the last three or four days into the back of their rolling trash compactor, and then toss the empty receptacles thoughtlessly any-which way so that they might be the victim of a good wind or a speeding car.

We used to joke about the conundrum as to how do you dispose of an old garbage can once it’s seen its last days? You know, how do you get the garbage man to take it off with the rest of the trash?

It was never really a problem in our household because my father never really threw away anything he thought he could reuse. So I remember us getting brand new garbage cans but I don’t recall us every getting rid of any. In fact, I think my dad is still using the same garbage cans we had when I six to corral things like shovels, rakes, and hoes; they have cracks and holes and they’re pretty battered and they’ve been hauled across several states, but I’m fairly sure if you look in the back of that barn of his, they’re in there.

So, you can imagine my utter surprise and horror when I moved to small town New England and discovered that there are still places that exist in the civilized world that don’t have garbage men and their wonderful trucks. One of my neighbors had a really good laugh as I sputtered over the phone “What do you mean there’s no trash day?”

Yup, apparently the big thing to do on the weekend in small town New England is to go to the dump and then head over to the Super Wal-Mart or the grocery store.

And by then it was too late. I’d already agreed to buy the house. My heart was set on it. My stuff was mostly packed.

So, now on the weekends, I head over to the dump with Pugly in the car and then we usually go to Lowes or the Super Wal-Mart. He likes to bark at people from the front seat.

But yesterday I did this totally brilliant thing that only I could do. Mind you, I’m only 5′1¾”. The trash compactor at the dump as this railing so you won’t fall in and it comes up to my chest. I have to lift my heavy, full trash cans up over this and tilt them to dump the garbage inside down into the trash compactor. Well, I got a good lift finally and was on the upswing and my garbage can just kept swinging, right out of my hands and down into the trash compactor. Way down into the trash compactor. Of course, it was the new garbage can I bought last month instead of the one I bought last November that I don’t like.

It’s a good thing I was going to Lowes to buy replacements for the torn window screen that Pugly ruined and the pull shade that my dad “fixed”.

So, now I know the answer to the conundrum: How do you throw away a garbage can? Clearly you can’t just wait around for some man to come pick it up or it’ll never get done. You do it yourself, like everything else.

Tagged as: garbage