Toxic Waste Day
It’s Toxic Waste Day. A blessing! The one day in the year when the residents of our county are invited to dispose of their accumulated “household hazardous materials”–for free! No questions asked. That’s good, because in the past when I did ask at the town hall about how to properly dispose of a little carbon tetrachloride, I got the impression it would be easier to obtain a building permit for a backyard nuclear reactor. Or a new puppy mill. No wonder Toxic Waste Day feels as festive as the Fourth of July.
The venue for this happy event changes every year. The location remains undisclosed until the very last minute. Out of the blue then a text arrives on my phone. It says go to an address on a road I’ve never heard of in a town I’ve never been to. I type the address into Google Maps and up pops an EPA travel advisory–but that doesn’t stop me. I’ve been preparing for this day for too long. The pickup is gassed and ready to go, with its payload of rusty paint cans, quivers of fluorescent light bulbs, leaky bottles of Chlordane, and an unopened case of Red Bull left by some roofers a few years back.
I hit the road and haul my mephitic freight far out into the wild woolly wags. Nobody lives in these parts. The trees along the road are blighted. No birds sing. Even poison ivy won’t grow here. Out of nowhere a bulbous-nosed traffic cop appears in the middle of the road. The buttons are popping from his uniform. His eyes are red. He may have a gun. With a menacing wave of his hand, he directs me down a dubious dirt lane. I make the turn. What choice do I–do any of us–have? The lane at once turns washboard. The portable Superfund Site I’ve been hauling is now shaken violently. This can’t be good.
At last, the end is near. In the distance, at the edge of a barren field, I spot a couple of corrugated steel buildings and an array of large open vats burping plumes of thick yellow smoke. Only when I get closer to the operations do I see the long line of vehicles encumbered with cargoes even more virulent than my own. Men clad in red t-shirts and wearing dark rubber gloves work fearlessly to relieve the citizenry of its caustic burdens. These men whistle while they work. None of them wears a ventilator. Nearby an American flag flutters on a white-painted pole.
The line of vehicles moves more quickly than expected. Before I know it, my turn to disburden myself of sin has arrived. The men in red shirts unload my half ton of hell. They are my heroes. Before I depart, I wave to them. They respond with a big thumbs up. My happiness is incandescent. All at once I realize that if I stepped out of this pickup, I would break into fireworks.
