Let It Grow Organic Gardens

And I resumed the struggle. -Vladimir

Sunday, February 06, 2005

It's February, I Must Be Ripping Up Linoleum

I've been saving as much copper pipe as I can from the greenhouse job in Waynesville.
It's the best way to get contraband into the Hot Springs dump - slip the attendant a handful of copper pipe and he'll leave you alone while you unload your truck. I've brought enough copper pipe up from Waynesville that I could sneak a Sherman Williams warehouse into the Hot Springs dump. If I so desired.
With me, though, usually, it's not the nature of the items I am bringing to the dump, but the sheer volume. The intern house is a case in point. The intern house was waist deep in garbage when I got here. It was like five families had lived in there on top of each other and all left on the same day. And bequeathed to me a pile of polyester clothes, five cans of Crisco, twelve boxes of coloring books, fifteen mattresses, a stove, a washing machine, a refridgerator and two hundred baby shoes.
Two years ago I started to clean out the intern house. Five truckloads (including three trailer loads) of garbage later, the house was empty. There were five layers of linoleum between the garbage and the kitchen floor, and each and every layer ended up in the Hot Springs dump. Last year, I ripped the linoleum out of the bedroom. (Nothing is too good for my interns.) This year, I'm replacing the floor in the bathroom. That necessitates, you guessed it, ripping up linoleum. (Only two layers.) Tomorrow morning, I'm bringing it down to the Hot Springs dump. I'm sure they'll be happy to see me.
Detritus from the 'Seventies has become something of a theme around the farm. The ten truckloads of garbage I hauled out of my house when I first arrived included the de riguer polyester clothes, boxes of thirty year old True Romance, baby shoes, and (the archaeologist's dream!) an 8-track. I saved some of my favorite relics, including a jelly glass commemorating Apollo 15. The fields have spit up, over the years, a quarter panel from a '74 Pontiac, enough Mountain Dew cans to boggle the mind (sans pull tab,) and baby shoes. So much for arrowheads.
And so much for the dream of a farm nestled in the Appalachians. Living in a trailer just isn't very Foxfire. I have friends who are always digging up all kinds of cool stuff - horse shoes, milling stones, hand operated drills, Confederate muskets, covered wagons, horse drawn plows, Victrolas .... Nevermind. I'm happy with my own little collection of garbage. If you need commemorative plate decorated with scenes from the Bicentennial, you know you to ask.

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