Gravity pulls you up. You shift into neutral just as you hit the exit. You accelerate as you rise above the highway, towards a stop sign at the end of what looks to you like a hill. You gain about thirty feet in altitude on the cars continuing toward Providence, or places more distant and exotic like New Jersey. That’s how you’re greeted, with a sensation of weightlessness, a mystery spot.
Of course, the mystery spot is gone. They tore it up when they expanded the highway. It was before I was born, but I know all about it. I’ve heard all about it. It might as well be my own memory.
Going to the dump was the best. We’d go on Saturday or Sunday, I don’t remember which, but I want to say Sunday because I associate the dump with cream-filled doughnuts. Dad got us doughnuts sometimes on Sunday. As a result I also associate doughnuts with WWF Wrestling, and NFL Football, but not college football. The allure of the dump is evasive. In my memory I can recall only peering over a teetering hill of washing machines and toasters. It may be olfactory, the sulfur rotting stench might have appealed to me. I thought skunk smelled like McDonalds McNuggets then.
The Dump is gone. They tilled it under and planted it over with grass. You can see it from the highway, an emerald hill dotted with odd little pipes like decorative toothpicks. You might think, oh a golf course, if driving by on your way from one place to another. But we know the truth. The hill vents gas. Still, the transfer station has none of the charm, with its neatly organized piles of junk. Junk wants to breathe free.
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