Messages in the Trash: Pysell Road in McHenry

I just went out between rain squalls into the glistening green and black woods to seek buried treasures from the past, back before plastic, when all was glass or metal, crockery or porcelain. They are lodged there near the stream in the moss, among the rocks and tree roots, once trash, now mysterious relics to be prodded and unearthed--broken or whole--back out into the light of day.

Who played with this 30s style toy car, rusting away? Who poured wine from this finely crafted glass flask, tumbling grapes sculpted down the front? I even found a tiny ship in a small, broken bottle! And a beautiful piece of pink glass plate, flowers molded on the rim.

This was a popular dump site, judging from the amount that comes to the surface year after year. When you walk around, you hear the broken glass beneath your feet, often just out of sight, which is why I like to remove it. Remember my blog about the two bears drinking out of the stream I walked past once? That was here, right across the stream from all this broken glass, some of it shards sticking straight up, ready to puncture unsuspecting feet. Between 4 and 5:30 I removed two big bins of glass, but there's a lot more there. And there are other things: composition roofing, hoses, rusty bed springs, remains of spark plugs and light bulbs, chunks of crockery, asphalt curbs (!), shoes, but mostly all different shapes and sizes of bottles, from tiny purfume bottles to some broken off necks 3 inches across. I can't imagine what those huge bottles looked like! Maybe there's a whole one farther down.

Farther down the hill, near the grocery store, when I was picking up there last week, I found a message from someone, inadvertently sent some windy day, no doubt. It was a grocery list on the back of one of Gary Larsen's Far Side calendar pages from March 18, 2007.

The cartoon showed two adjacent buildings, one with a sign that said Institute for the Study of Migraine Headaches, and the other with a brightly lit sign that said Floyd's School for Marching Bands. Out of the migraine headache building poured an angry mob, wielding pitchforks, rifles, and baseball bats. The caption read: The dam bursts. This seemed intended for me, as I was diagnosed with migraines about two months ago, luckily long after my daughters spent many years in high school marching bands!

On the back, in neat, casual cursive pencil, was the list: milk, baby carrots, baking pototoes, mushrooms, ww Ritz, colby.