Hillbilly Garbage Disposal

What do city people do with their garbage? I would imagine
they grind it down the garbage disposal, or scrape it off the
plate into the trash.

What do we do with it here in Redneckland? Throw it
outside, of course.

As I was growing up, we lived in town. OK, not a very
big town, and true, we didn't have sewers there, just ditches
running along the road. But, hey, that was a paved road.
Oh yeah, and I lived in a trailer. But still, it was a civilized
area with neighbors in houses.

Getting back to the garbage issue....After supper (which
is what we call it around here-- not dinner), my mom would
scrape all the garbage into a pan and take it out to the ditch
in the back yard and dump it out. The neighbor's cats would
come a-runnin'. There were 4 of them, John, Ringo, George,
and Paulie. I think the neighbors were Beatles fans.

When I was in Junior High, we built a house outside the
city limits. Mom still dumped the garbage outside, by a
little creek this time. There were no cats, but plenty of
dogs to enjoy this bounty.

So when I moved into my own house in the country, of course
I threw my garbage outside. It is really kind of fun. The kids
sail slices of stale bread off the back deck like Frisbees. They
fight over who gets to throw the eggs or watermelon, things
that explode. This tossing of garbage into the great outdoors
seems normal to me.

When I was teaching at a school several counties away, my
friend had three of us over for dinner. The meal was pretty
good for something she cooked herself. It was after dinner
that the horror began. I was keeping her company in the
kitchen while she cleaned up. She was quite a talker, and in
the middle of a story she said, "Follow me." She picked up
the pan of leftover corn and walked down the hall. Of course
I followed. I don't know which suspense was greater, the
story or the curiosity to find out where she was going with
that corn. She marched into the bathroom, lifted the toilet lid,
and flushed that corn!

Now that's just not right!