Big Dump, Little Dump

I guess I started rescuing trash at an early age. When I was six years old my parents lived in a mobile home park. This was in the days when mobile home parks were still OK places to be.  It was safe. It was full of kids. It was heaven!  

There were a couple of places nearby where people used to dump their trash.  There was one place that was very big with a lot of trash so we called it "The Big Dump"  and another dump that was smaller, but closer by and we called it "The Little Dump"   (we were not very clever children)  These weren't the kinds of dumps with people watching because these were dumps that weren't supposed to be dumps in the first place.  They were secret dumps! Which made them even more exciting places for children to scavenge around in. 

Of course we weren't supposed to go there, it was dangerous and all.... but that didn't stop us.  It was one of my favorite places to go because I would always come home with treasures.  One day a group of use went all the way out to The Big Dump. I think some big kids went with us and it was very exciting.   We scouted around and looked for cool stuff to bring home and I really scored big! I found a beautiful statue.  It was a woman seated on a chair. It was made of porcelain (of course I didn't know that at the time) and it had flowers on it and it was painted and I just couldn't believe that someone would throw away this beautiful, perfectly good statue.  

I carried my treasure home beaming all the way. I was so excited to show my Mom what I got. I knew she would be so pleased to have this wonderful statue.  I skipped and walked and ran all the way home and when I got there I excitedly barged in the door "Mamma!  Look what I got!"  I beamed up at her proudly.  "I found this beautiful statue.  I can't believe someone threw it away." I held it up for her to see. "The only thing wrong with it, is the head is broken off!"