To the Dump

Uedorf, Germany, 1959 © 2022 Craig Dahlberg

Each week, a wagonload of garbage arrived at our house situated on the bank of the Rhine River. The wagon, replete with accompanying noxious odors, drew flies like a Disney theme park woos visitors. It was gross stuff, in this wagon. Just imagine your community’s weekly trash and rotting garbage all piled into one nasty, stinking, portable pile on parade—broken furniture, discarded clothing, drained motor oil, bits of string and nails and mangled wood, and a generous anointing of rotting food scraps, the passion of the buzzing flies.

An elderly woman in a tattered 1950’s-era patterned, heavily stained dress perched squarely inside the wagon, straddling the discarded garbage and trash. She wore leather boots and a threadbare baggy wool coat over a shabby sweater. A ragged scarf protected her head from the flies.

Her elderly husband’s mouth and cheeks animated his walrus mustache as he huffed deep breaths, stretching down to hug the next mound of trash to his chest. He heaved it up into the arms of his wife, awaiting the load from within the wagon. She searched for salvageable discards as he reached for the next armload of trash.

Meanwhile, their obedient horse, covered with burlap to guard it against the trash and the flies, awaited their command to move the wagon forward to the next house.

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During Christmas in Germany in the late 1950’s, we gifted our garbage man and his wife a small monetary offering, which they eagerly accepted, along with the other modest gifts of cookies, beer and schnapps from other neighbors. But that was small payback for the service they rendered us, unthanked, week upon week, offloading our stinking refuse into their garbage trailer.

At bedtime after I am asleep, their horse-drawn wagon still enters my dreams. I see that rickety-rickety garbage wagon. I hear the clomp-clomp of the hooves, and the gentle voice of the garbage man reining his horse to a stop at our driveway. He bends low to pick up and deposit my discards into the arms of his wife, atop the wagon. I see him glance at me as if to ask, “Is there any more?”

There’s always more. Scientists tell us that during our sleep state, our brains go through a cleaning cycle, during which the worn-out, damaged tissues in our brain are removed, like so much trash and garbage. The glymphatic system eliminates potentially toxic waste products from our brain, protecting us from disorders, including, very probably, Alzheimer’s Disease.

In my dream-state, this is the stuff being gathered for the garbage man. The exhausted brain cells that have done their job need to be replaced and refreshed. That’s not all. Along with those cells should go the day’s unredeemed endeavors—the worn and weary misguided thoughts, the ill-advised priorities and self-protecting reserve—they also deserve the dump.

Unfortunately, something in me wants to steel against that brain-cleansing process. Instead of yielding my wayward ways and misguided thoughts to the garbage dump, I want to hang on to the refuse of the day. Go ahead, garbage man, move on to the next house, to the next brain! That’s silly, of course. It’s even stupid. Why would I choose to hang onto trash? To hang on to distress? To anger? To being overlooked and ignored? To pride and self-importance?

And so lingers my ancient German garbage-master, peering into my brain, into my dream-state. “Do you vant to keep zat?” he inquires in his Prussian accent, suggesting he has more room on his wagon for anything I want to offload. “Do you vant to keep your broken hopes? Your aches? Your trouble? I can take zem!”

Oh, good grief. Don’t make me choose. I know what I want to do. But can I really let him take all that to the dump to be just—gone? That familiar trash is what I know the best; it has become part of me.

My patient trash man makes one final appeal; he awaits my decision. “Any more?” the mustache twitches. He reaches out to me one more time. I ponder whether there might indeed be more.

And then…I decide. It’s done.

He stoops down to gather my garbage one final time. He makes the day’s perfect pitch. His wife makes the catch.

Score!