The Ravine

I was watching American Pickers again the other day but can't tell you just why.  It's the show where two guys drive across the country in their van looking for old junk to sell in their stores.  In the many hours I've watched that show, there is not one thing I'd ever want to buy or frankly, for that matter, own.  I have enough junk of my own.

My parents had a barrel that was used for burning paper, cardboard and the like.  What discarded stuff couldn't be fed to the cows or at least the pigs, had to either be burned or put into a big metal water trough that got hauled to the dump from time to time.   When the metal trough got high enough (nowhere near full), Dad would load it up and haul it to the dump.  This is not the city dump I'm talking about here.  My Dad had his own dump.

Up on the dry farm, there is a ravine.  As a child, the ravine seemed almost as big as the Grand Canyon actually is.  Up, up, up the road he would go to the dry farm.  Back, back, back the truck would go towards the ravine.  I always got out first because there was little doubt in my mind that one day we might, might, might just go a little too far and end up  in there ourselves.

You didn't just drag the stuff out with a rake and leave it there, either.  It had to be hand-thrown into the ravine.  There's stuff in there from tin cans to a wonderful old cabinet radio that quit working.  It was a sorry day when that thing went over into the ravine.  I'm sure these pickers would have a hay-day if they got a chance to rifle through all that discarded stuff.  My recollection is that Dad filled in the ravine though after a county dump came to Dayton.

You knew better than to take anything out of the junk ravine.  It was just a given, and besides, Grandma Rice always told us that if we didn't wear gloves when touching junk, we would get polio.  Grandma was believable.

The only thing that ever left the dry farm ravine alive was Old Blue, my dad's Chevrolet truck that he later gave to Johnny Gailey.