To view or leave comments on this story, click HERE.
I love our recycling station on Devil’s Dive Road. You stuff your plastic and paper into the big red bins, put your glass into the open bin and bam, done. As you can see from the photo, there’s a lot of wine being consumed on the Old Mission Peninsula.
When I was a kid growing up in the 1960s, I used to go with my dad over to the dump (known as “The Dump”), and everything got tossed into the giant hole in the center. So if you drive past the recycling bins and drove around the circle, the dump was in that big space on the left.
Old Mission Gazette is Reader Supported.
Click Here to Keep the Gazette Going.
And I mean, everything went in there – household trash, farm trash, pesticide trash, yada yada. As I recall, my dad had the good sense to tell me to stay inside our old green and white Ford pickup while he tossed stuff into The Dump. But I do remember looking at the ceiling of the truck one time and seeing a mass of flies in there. Ah, the good old days.
My dad, Walter Johnson, who grew up just north of Mapleton in our old farmhouse (the house, which burned down in 1964, sat across the road from the big barn that’s still there; it was known as “Crescent Hill Fruit Farms” at the time, but now they call it “Johnson Farms”), said there used to be a pond where the Recycling Station is now, and he would walk over there in the winter and go ice-skating.
At the time, all the farmers had their own dumps on their property. You can still find remnants of them here and there around the Peninsula.
Find out more about the Peninsula Township Compactor and Recycling Center (that’s the official name) here.
To view or leave comments on this story, click HERE.
My older brothers used to go to “the dump” in my younger years – they would go for target practice, shooting rats!!! Can you believe that? Also, my girls would ride to the dump with my dad and they’d always come home with a toy. My mother would always say, “Oh Edward – why would you let those little kids bring that dirty thing home!” Funny memories. 🙂
Yes – rats! I mean, we (meaning, I) sometimes complain about our modern times, but when you think back, rats and flies and a giant hole in the ground where everyone dumped all their stuff – we’ve come a long way!
But it sounds like Ed had that whole “recycling” thing down before anyone else – toys that were re-used. 🙂
[…] That church pew you see on the right-hand side of the photos? Picked it up for free at the dump one day. When we first hauled it in here, I had this vision of using it to put shoes on and […]
[…] the left is the church pew we picked up for free from the dump. When we first set the pew there, I had grand visions of sitting there to put on my shoes and […]
[…] we went by the dump recycling center the other day, I noticed there’s now a little parking area on the Bowers […]