Never heard of a dump closed on Thanksgiving? Where you been, kid? On the Group W bench?
We almost always close this dump on Thanksgiving; for a little while, anyway. Think of it as a friendly gesture. Gives you a chance to have a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat, maybe a nap, before Officer Obie calls and all the after-dinner fun begins.
While you wait for the phone to ring, how about having a little singalong? If you want to end war and stuff, you gotta sing loud. We’re just waiting for it to come around, is what we’re doing. …
• In related news: Our patron saint of Thanksgiving is getting married. Congrats to Arlo and his bride-to-be, Marti. May their one big pile be better than two little piles.
Mad Blog Media 
November 25, 2021 at 7:44 am |
Have a great day! As good as that last sentence, which I, of course, plan to steal.
November 25, 2021 at 3:08 pm |
Steal away. We’re not proud … or tired.
November 25, 2021 at 8:11 am |
Ahhh…Patrick’s annual posting of Alice’s Restaurant! Now my day is complete!
Happy Thanksgiving, all!
November 25, 2021 at 3:07 pm |
Getting married? Well, here’s a toast to finding happiness wherever and whenever one can. Gotta grab it when you can, or you’re going to find yourself waiting for it to come around again.
November 25, 2021 at 3:19 pm |
Happy to report that a Palisade Peach pie, another apple cranberry, and the obligatory pumpkin did not stand a chance against our band of brothers and sisters, and those everywhere now-a-bed shall think themselves accursd they were not here, and hold their appetites cheap whiles any speaks with us upon this Thanksgiving Day!
November 25, 2021 at 4:11 pm |
The dump really was closed on Thanksgiving. And the entire story and song is true. I think I posted this pic some years back, but for new readers…
(hopefully, this will embed)
November 25, 2021 at 9:05 pm |
Well, I’ll be….
November 26, 2021 at 9:24 am |
Here’s more of the story, from the New England Historical Society. Arlo and Officer Obie eventually became friends.
November 26, 2021 at 7:59 pm |
Just beautiful, made my day.
November 26, 2021 at 11:05 pm |
Thanks, Patrick. There’s a lot more info in the church itself (now The Guthrie Center), with tributes and other news stories along the walls, though much is centered on the Guthries themselves, and the many other friends and benefactors that made the center a reality and help to keep it going. The pic above is from the front hallway. We’ve been there twice, the second time for one of their weekly “Hootenannies.”
Here’s one I took of the church building. The top left stained window is now a peace symbol.
November 25, 2021 at 10:44 pm |
I also found a dump closed one day at a very inconvenient time. I had a truck load of worm eaten deck wood that I needed to get rid of and I was positive that the dump was open. Well they were, but they closed at noon. It was a Sunday afternoon and I had to get the stake bed back to the shop by the next morning. Fortunately for the criminally minded, I recalled a large contractor dumpster in a new neighborhood a few miles away. I might have disposed of the large amount of deck wood that I had in that dumpster. I thought that if anybody were to show up, I would happily pay them for the dump charge for the entire 40 yard dumpster. I still plausibly don’t recall what I actually did to dispose of all that wood.
November 26, 2021 at 10:43 am |
I live in Flathead County, MT we have the baddest garbage dumpsters as they have 12 ft chain link fences topped with double layers of razor wire. I kid you not, unsure if it is the garbage trying to escape, the grizzlies trying to get in or keep then local riff raff from dumpster diving. But it is truly funny, baddest garbage the whole damn country. Apologies to Jim Croce.
November 26, 2021 at 11:10 am |
So many people are having work done on their houses around here that we hardly need trash collection anymore. Just jog up the street with a bag and chuck it into one of the construction Dumpsters.
November 27, 2021 at 11:50 am |
Reminded me of my great garbage caper of 1984. Fortunately I was not arrested.
I was cleaning out the house after the divorce during my grad school days on Long Island. Wife #1 took the car and high tailed it off to Upstate NY for a fresh start, shall we say, since this is a public blog. We split up most of what passed for valuables for a couple making ends meet with a part time job and a grad student stipend. But she left me all the junk that had collected over a short lived 5 year marriage.
The landlord finally got tired of me constantly trolling for housemates to share the rent, as he really wanted to rent to a “young and stable couple” so my last housemate and I got the official order of the boot. We washed the walls, cleaned up, and crawling into the attic, I found the legacy of time….eventually, about two dozen black plastic garbage bags of junk.
Like Arlo, I had to deal with it. Well, there was a small plaza at the end of the street with a dumpster behind it.
Little did I know there were some letters inside. So at the campus a few days later, I got a Nasty Letter(tm) from the plaza offering me a deal: write a check to help defray the cost of the next garbage pickup or get a friendly call from the local version of Obie.
Needless to say, I wrote the check, which was a fair chunk for me back then. So I felt Arlo’s pain.
November 27, 2021 at 2:04 pm |
No doubt about it. You belong on the Group W bench.
November 28, 2021 at 12:28 am |
An interesting coincidence. Earlier today (Saturday) I decided to do some yard trimming and Fall clean up. The local garbage transfer station offers free disposal of yard debris during the month of November. I rounded up four garbage cans and promptly filled them up with lot’s of greenery. I have a large tarp that I arranged in my maxi-minivan and wrestled the full cans into the van. Down the hill I went headed for the transfer station with the knowledge that a fraction of the growth on our overgrown Pac NW property is moving on to the compost pile. A few minutes later I discovered that O’Grady had cursed me. The transfer station only accepts yard debris for free disposal on Monday through Friday. #$&*!@** Thoughts of midnight dumping over the fence of the transfer station is passing through my mind.
“Yes your Honor. I am very surprised that Detective Stadenko monitors the blog of MadDogMedia. May I change my plea to guilty?
November 28, 2021 at 7:55 am |
My mom got this pop-up notification this morning.
https://www.massmoments.org/moment-details/arlo-guthrie-convicted-of-littering.html
November 28, 2021 at 9:43 am |
thanks for posting the song. i hadn’t listened to it in years and it brought back a lot of thanksgiving memories.