Randy ...
My family had a Summer Cottage in the Pocono Mountains, at Lake Wallenpaupack, that my Dad rented out for the last three weeks of June, the months of July and September and the first two weeks of October, with our family getting to enjoy it for the month of August (my Dad's "Escape from living next door to the Church.") There were not a whole lot of cabins/cottages built back in those woods called Paupack Gardens at that time ... maybe 10% or 15% of the lots were built on then.
The guy who came around each week in the early Fifties to collect the garbage had a regular old late '40's vintage faded green Chevy pick-up with the sides extended upward by a half of a 4x8 sheet of plywood on each side and another piece between the bed and the cab. That was it! He would then drive about three or four miles up into the woods going away from the lake on what people called "the old logging road" to dump the garbage back in the woods. Some of us kids, in our daily explorations, followed that old road back into the woods a few times. We were more of the opinion that it was a road that used to go back to what was at the time a dilapidated, falling down ruin of what may have been a homestead or a hunting cabin in a previous lifetime.
Eventually, after a couple of decades, the "environmentalists" discovered the garbage man's dump site and went to court to have it closed down. (By this time, he had acquire a couple of regular garbage trucks a couple of drivers and helpers.)
Well, the court shut his dump site down. He then had to truck the garbage 40 miles to the nearest "approved" village dump, the cost of garbage collection almost doubled (as he then had to pay to dump it there.)
But the
BIGGER problem was ...
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... several generations of Black Bear had never eaten anywhere else except at this man's dump site way back, deep in the woods. They got humgry when their source of food ceased! We had often seen White Tailed Deer, a doe and a fawn or two walking down the road during our evening meal, when it was very quiet back in our neck of the woods. But one evening, sure as shootin', here comes a Momma Black Bear and two cubs, strolling down the middle of that dirt road looking for some dinner!
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They spotted our garbage can next to the cottage and began to empty it ... all over the place! Our big German Shephard went crazy barking; the bears departed quickly.
But the next day, Dad had to drive into the town of Hawley, 14 miles away, for a new garbage can ... ours looked like a crumpled piece of aluminum foil!
All that excitement because a group of people had nothing better to do but stick there noses into other people's business!
The garbage man's dump site is still there, way back up that now overgrown dirt road ... no attempt was ever made to remove the stuff that's just sitting there being reclaimed by Mother Nature ... maybe the tree huggers went back there and were greeted by hungry Black Bears ... who knows.