Before Karate Sundays, when I was much younger, my sister and I spent a lot of time scavenging at the landfill. Back in the day, we could find a lot of good stuff there. I can’t remember what that good stuff was now, except for a carrom board with a torn corner net. It didn’t come with any other pieces; they were probably somewhere in those stinking piles of refuse, but we didn’t have the parts we needed to play billiards, checkers, crokinole, or any of the other diversions this square of wood promised.
As an adult, I continue to enjoy scavenging — for clothing at thrift stores, for clues with my nieces, for the right words for poems. However, I am less likely to collect items from my local dump.
This display along the Taber Ranch’s walking path is a monument celebrating entropy, inevitable social decline and degeneration. I now know what to do with a carrom board, a spare toilet and picture frame, a collection of bunnies and a spare windmill. I’ll add them to the museum at Taber Ranch.
