It’s not the isolated bag that somehow gets dislodged from a moving pickup or a Wal-Mart bag that shoots out the window when Missy cranks the handle.
No, instead, what a residential area in Camp Luna inherited Tuesday morning, compliments of some anonymous donor over the Memorial Day weekend was more than a dozen bags of trash, garbage, organic stuff, important records, school reports, sensitive material from hospitals and welfare agencies, a partially used prescription, a copy of a speeding ticket and several dozen empty DVD cases.
My wife, who likes to take early-morning walks, came across piles of huge bags on the pavement near our house. Most likely, the benefactor simply lowered the tailgate, shoving everything out.
Going through people’s garbage is not our idea of good times, but in order to learn whom we should thank for this windfall, we sifted through enough discarded material to get a profile — and fill a pickup.
Because of the kinds of stuff discarded, we’re not sure whether the owners themselves did the dumping, or whether it was a landlord/lady who evicted a family, cleared out all their stuff, and — disregarding all matters of littering laws, sanitation, courtesy and decency — transferred the problem to someone else.
Would they have made the trip to the transfer station, a quarter-mile away, if it hadn’t been closed Sunday and Monday? The attendant, Blas Duran, probably would have even helped the people unload their truck, the same way Val Valencia, Duran’s predecessor, would have.
But we can only speculate. The dumping must have taken place early Tuesday, as several of us had been riding bikes earlier and had spotted nothing. But the time lapse gave loose neighbor dogs a chance for their own gift-opening.
Oh yes, we have plenty of names attached to the rubbish and will turn them over to authorities. We have photos as well. I’ll wager that if contacted, the people whose names appear on receipts, school and hospital papers, and other items will swear, “Oh, no, we didn’t dump the stuff. Some man with a pickup always collects our stuff. But we don’t know his name.”
In no particular order, here are some of the things my son Diego, my wife Bonnie and I, outfitted with rubber gloves, came across:
- A recent Wal Mart receipt for $65.57, lists 37 items, 25 of which are pepperoni, Cheetos, mini-pizzas, candy bars and soft drinks. The words “EBT Foodstamp Tend” appear at the bottom of the receipt.
- Possibly 50 empty DVD cases. There’s “Just Married,” A Rattlesnake in Your Hand,” “Waiting — Unrated and Raw,” “Blow” and “Lords of Dogtown.” But why the empty cases? Does the owner store the disks in a separate pouch?
- A demographics worksheet for Juvenile Justice Court, showing a boy born in 1995 and living on Railroad Avenue. The mother’s divorced; the boy’s father lives in Albuquerque.
- For another person there’s a speeding ticket receipt, with the 23-year-old’s promise to appear in Metro Court.
- There’s a bill requesting a minimum payment of $25, from First Premier Bank in Sioux Falls, S.D.
- A copy of a birth certificate for a boy born in January 1995.
- A receipt for the local Rent-A-Center.
- A record of a hospital visit by a man suffering from vomiting and diarrhea.
- A fact sheet provided by Alta Vista Regional Hospital, describing Oxycodone and Acetaminophen, with instructions on how much and when to take these pain-relievers.
It’s easy to develop a profile on people whose easily identifiable and incriminating material gets dumped by a roadside.
So, good Samaritans that we are, and realizing that to many people, trash becomes “somebody else’s problem,” we tidied up the area.
And we also hope you’ve had a pleasant and peaceful Memorial Day weekend.