Abyss

As I mentioned in the last entry, Cris loaded up the pickup truck full of junk we'd been meaning to cast out for years. (In fact, this is one of the main reasons we bought a pickup truck this summer: there was no other way to ever get all this junk to the dump. The other reason is that the truck was red and a really good deal.) But she was frustrated in her attempts to actually go to the dump because I had the truck key and I was in New York.

So today I came home after lunch and got in the truck and went over to Cesar Chavez St. to get a helper. Cesar Chavez St. is where all the undocumented workers hang out hoping to get day work. At 1:30 there were still a few hopeful souls, and I snagged one of them. Off we went.

The San Francisco dump is located at the very south end of the city. I exited the freeway just before the causeway that crosses a corner of the bay near Brisbane, on an ominously named exit called Tunnel Avenue (the name refers to a railway tunnel used by the Caltrain commuter line) and follow the signs to a vast collection of buildings, crushers, ramps and scales. Following the frantic hand signals of several dump workers, who had to divert me from going on the scale reserved for newspaper recycling and from using the ramp reserved for garbage trucks, I finally managed to get weighed. Then it was up a curving road to a huge hangar built into the side of a hill. Inside was a hellish scene, with trucks and vans backing up and casting their refuse into a pit about fifty yards long. Inside the pit, a large bulldozer moved things around. Overhead, mist descended from a dozen nozzles, I suppose to keep the dust down, but it created a fetid atmosphere that made the whole place look smoky.

We dumped our refuse and escaped from the building and got the empty truck weighed again. It cost $44 for all that junk, including a lot of dirt from the garden we didn't have any place for. Then I dropped my helper back off on Cesar Chavez.

Tonight: Berkeley Symphony concert, just one in a whole series of classic music events this month celebrating composer Olivier Messiaen.