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Living in the California bush we had no garbage service. Our garbage was never greeted in the early morning by a man with a big smile on his face and a kind word or two. We couldn't burn any of the garbage because it was the dry season and everything was ready to catch on fire anyway, including ourselves. The garbage was a problem for a little while and then we discovered a way to get rid of it.
We took the garbage down to where there were three abandoned houses in a row. We carried sacks full of tin cans, papers, peelings, bottles and Popeyes.
We stopped at the last abandoned house where there were thousands of old receipts to the San Francisco Chronicle thrown all over the bed and the children's toothbrushes were still in the bathroom medicine cabinet.
Behind the place was an old outhouse and to get down to it, you had to follow the path down past some apple trees and a patch of strange plants that we thought were either a good spice that would certainly enhance our cooking or the plants were deadly nightshade that would cause our cooking to be less.
We carried the garbage down to the outhouse and always opened the door slowly because that was the only way you could open it, and on the wall there was a roll of toilet paper, so old it looked like a relative, perhaps a cousin, to the Magna Carta.
We lifted up the lid of the toilet and dropped the garbage down into the darkness. This went on for weeks and weeks until it became very funny to lift the lid of the toilet and instead of seeing darkness below or maybe the murky abstract outline of garbage, we saw bright, definite and lusty garbage heaped up almost to the top.
If you were a stranger and went down there to take an innocent crap, you would've had quite a surprise when you lifted up the lid.
We left the California bush just before it became necessary to stand on the toilet seat and step into that hole, crushing the garbage down like an accordion into the abyss.
Richard Brautigan
Trout Fishing in America
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