I thought Syracuse had big maggots beneath the garbage cans in summer. You should see what grows here on Cape Cod.
Did the trash company get the schedule wrong and stop the bi-weekly pickups too soon? Or did I not extend the service this far when the rentals were off to a slow start last spring? Those who know me best describe me as kindhearted but when it comes to attention to detail, well, they would delicately say I’m a work in progress. I’m sure it was operator error, the operator being me.
On one of the last most glorious days of summer, with everybody calling in and asking me how’s the beach, I can report to you that I haven’t seen the ocean but the three big garbage cans that had two weeks of trash cooking in them are empty, washed and drying in the yard in the sun.
Kitchen garbage disposals are rare on the Cape where every home is on septic, so all the table scraps go into the trash for twice weekly pickup. Think about it. Shellfish, leftover seafood and meat and everything else. You get the picture. If it all got hauled away every day it wouldn’t be too often.
Mission accomplished.
I knew I was in trouble when I arrived last night and the garage was too stinky to step into. Anything more than a minute and I’m sure my brain would get rewired. It took seven hours to get here in the traffic. I’d deal with the trash in the morning.
So today, with all of New England headed to the beaches, I loaded the three heavy bins into the back of my car for the smelliest five mile drive of my life. I opened every window of the car as I drove to the Harwich Town Dump, and all it did was drive the odor through my hair and clothing at gale force speed.
Passing a convenience store and gas station, a woman waited to pull out into the road and she had a large tissue over her mouth and nose. I’m sure she had to sneeze or something, but with what I was going through on that ride, I was sure she smelled me coming from a mile away and put the tissue to her nose to defend herself.
The story ends well. I didn’t crash the car and spread the toxic sludge all over myself and the world, I paid my five dollars at the gate, backed my truck into the disposal area and unloaded eight bags of the most disturbing mess you’ve never, ever seen. It was the best five dollars I spent all year. Here, you guys take it.
My time at the beach is coming. I imagine Christian and his friend Jacob stayed up most of the night playing video games and eating, and they haven’t surfaced as of noon. I’ve been rearranging all the kitchen cabinets after eight families rented this house, one after another, for a week at a time all summer long. I’m lucky to have everyone of them, as it allows me to afford this place with no more job at Channel 5.
After ten years of staying up late to anchor the 11 pm news, I still keep late hours. I’ll hit the beach near my house around 2:30, have a swim, read a little and head back to the house where Christian by that time may be making his breakfast. We’re hitting the Bay beaches of Brewster at low tide around 6:30 tonight so he and Jacob can skim board and we can anticipate the sunset in the most magnificent western view I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of them….Hawaii, Oswego, Sylvan Beach, all famous places for sunsets. For the play of light on the tidal pools, and all the shades of blue and silver, Skaket Beach in Brewster tops them all.
A late blue hydrangea. The bushes grew to six feet this year.
In the meantime, I’ll try to escape the noxious garbage smell that lingers around me. Like the old days when I covered fires as a reporter and my hair and clothing smelled like smoke for hours afterward, I reek of rotting lobster shells and maggots. I swear I did myself no favors by opening the windows in the car a few hours ago. I just drove the smell through my pores and into my internal organs.
Nothing that a late summer dip in the Atlantic won’t cure, a very short time from now.
Loading ...
{ 0 comments… add one now }