Meditations on a Dump Run (Part 3)

Invariably, there is always something you don’t want to throw away at a dump run, but it can’t be helped. In high school, I remember throwing away my Civil War, cowboy and Indian, and WW II action play sets. I damn near cried, but what was I supposed to do with them?

One of the last items we pitched was a mattress I’d had for 14 years. I know it was 14 years because I’d bought the mattress in 2004 with my then-girlfriend Rose. She hated my old mattress and at one point told me she would never sleep on it again, much less have sex. We drove to Roby’s furniture store in Lincoln City and tried out various mattresses in the showroom with probably more ardor than was required. In fact, if I recall correctly, Rose tackled me onto one of the fancy brands and then sat on my chest and pounded the mattress to test its firmness, all the while making subtle sex noises. The showroom guys didn’t know what to make of that. But that was Rose and she got the mattress she wanted.

Now, I had thrown this artifact of my life away and I was left without a mattress. Can a person start over at my age without a proper mattress? I’ll soon find out. A foam pad doesn’t count, I think.

As I said, I didn’t have great things to shatter, Despite this, my friend and I managed a couple of mini-smashes that delighted us, and quite obviously turned him into a instant dump run enthusiast. The desk cracked apart quite nicely. We teamed up on a quasi couch/hide-a-bed and it flew farther than we thought and the twisting metal upon impact generated a soothing sound.

After we finished, I looked at my friend’s face and recognized an instant convert to the joys of the dump run.

As I drove us to return the U-Haul, I thought there ought to be a country song where the singer goes on a dump run to throw away his mattress that his wife used to cheat on him. (Or some variation on that theme, with perhaps throwing the mattress away because he used it to cheat on his wife, or the man throws the mattress away because he can’t bear to have it around because they bought it together on a second date and wore it out on the third…something like that. You get idea.)

Later that day, I went to the bank and struck up a conversation with a teller. She asked me how my day was going. I told her about my run to the dump and that I felt happy about breaking some shit.

“I met my husband at the dump,” she said.

I said there ought to be a country song or Hallmark movie about that.

We then engaged in a long and passionate conversation on the joys of the dump run during its golden age. A couple of customers chimed in with their fond dump run memories. Every one of them was older than 50.