My good friend, Dancing Mandolin Player, and I go back a long way. A loooonnnnng way. Back to when there were diaper pails in our bathrooms.

No one under the age of 40 remembers diaper pails. I should go into Walmart and see if they still exist. There is now something called a “diaper genie”, which was explained to me recently by three experienced grandmothers at a baby shower and I admit I still don’t understand the concept. Something about diaper “pearls” and Pampers and no mess.

Huh.

Anyway, many years ago Dancing Mandolin Player (let’s call her DMP) and I planned to sell our crafts at a Christmas bazaar at the high school. Said school was 8 miles east, along a winding two-lane road. Along that road was a gravel pull-out with several dumpsters available for the local folks to use.

The original dump had been an open area halfway up a mountain. In the early 1970’s a big night out was to drive up there at dusk, drink beer and watch the black bears rummage through the garbage.

But all that changed, which I’m sure was good for the bears, when the town upgraded to dumpsters.

DMP picked me up very early on a Saturday morning in December and we loaded my bags and boxes of homemade calico objects into her husband’s old blue truck. A few miles down the road she said in a deceptively casual tone, “Oh, by the way, I need to stop at the dumpster for a minute. Drop some stuff off.”

She sounded a little strange, but it was early. And cold. And it looked like snow. I paid no attention, until we stopped and she looked a little guilty. She explained that her husband asked her to get rid of something. I asked if she wanted help. She said yes.

We climbed out of her truck and she handed me one of her husband’s battered leather work gloves. “You’re going to need this.”

I am?

Oh, yes, I was. Because in the back of the truck was a deer carcass. A big one. And our mission was to get it into a dumpster. The carcass was frozen. The blood was frozen. The snow was frozen. Everything was frozen together.

You know, because it was December.

DMP kept muttering, “I’m going to get him for this.” “Him” was her hunter husband, who had uncharacteristically sprung this little chore on her at the last minute, when she’d had no choice but to pile her holiday crafts around a dead animal and head down the hill because (a) her other car wouldn’t start, (b) there was no other car, or (c) she had to use the 4-wheel drive truck that morning because it was December.  I am too old now to remember the details.  I do remember that her very nice husband was in big trouble.

“I’m going to get him for this,” she said a hundred or so more times.

“It’s okay,” I panted, after heaving my share of Bambi’s mother into the bin. “Thanks for the glove.”

We cleaned our boots in the snow, but we were convinced we smelled like death for the rest of the day.

And that, folks,  was how we went to the dump after the old dump was closed and replaced with bearproof dumpsters.  Back in the olden days.

It is different now.

(to be continued)