Day 4: Dumps

The walls came down, but now we have a problem: trash bags full of ceiling tiles and piles of paneling taking up space on the floor.  We are painstakingly removing nails from any beams that seem salvageable, but the rest of the stuff has got to go.  Greg has a list of city dumps, so we load up his pickup truck and take off.  The first trip is a qualified success: the overseer allows us to get rid of the scraps, but says we can't come back because these kinds of materials are prohibited.  However, there are more dumps on the list, so we load up again and go for a drive through scenic, economically depressed Southwest Philadelphia.  We barely get out of the truck this time before being told that we have to go to a different spot nearby.  When we get there, we realize that this is a commercial dump.  It's going to cost $90 to dump anything under a ton--literally 2,000 pounds--of trash.  Since we have closer to a couple hundred pounds (maybe?) of trash, and no way to bring a larger amount, we give up and drive home.  So far this morning we have spent about 3 hours getting rid of one truckload--there are still at least five more truckloads worth of trash sitting in our living room.  We consider the options--breaking everything down, bagging it, and letting it sit in the basement, putting out a few bags every trash day; looking for other dumps; crying.  We get to work on options one and two.

The next morning, operating on a tip from Greg's contractor cousin Roger, we locate a dump in Pennsauken that only charges us $20 to get rid of the truckload.  We also realize that the original dump will take our trash as long as it arrives in bags and not in a pickup truck.  So, Andrea and her friend Amy load up the little red neon to capacity--about 5 contractor bags worth of trash--and make a trip.  It goes well, so they do it again.  And again.  And again.