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- Unofficial Dump
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- Miles Eddy
Commentator Mary Van Pelt lives in the rural San Luis Valley of southern Colorado and remembers fondly a place where people used to trade in silence things they no longer wanted for things that others left behind.
"I always found this place fascinating, like a modern archeological dig, a statement about our throwaway society."
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Piece Description
Commentator Mary Van Pelt lives in the rural San Luis Valley of southern Colorado and remembers fondly a place where people used to trade in silence things they no longer wanted for things that others left behind. "I always found this place fascinating, like a modern archeological dig, a statement about our throwaway society."
Broadcast History
Aired August, 2004 on KRZA 88.7 FM Alamosa/Taos.
Aired April, 2005 on KRCC 91.5 FM Colorado Springs.
Transcript
MARY VAN PELT: Not far from my home, in the vast and sandy Chico brush land, was a place I called the Unofficial Dump. I think the place had been a dump since the early 1940s, used by people who could not get to or could not afford the legal landfill fee. It was a place where people traded in silence - a used television set or an easy chair in fair condition left at the dirt and gravel entrance would disappear within a day. I once found an almost new almond colored Rubbermaid dish drain rack. I always found this place fascinating, like a modern archeological dig, a statement about our throwaway society.
There was a path that wandered through an assortment of refrigerators, ovens, dryers, and washers all with rusting bullet holes; shattered porcelain toilets and rusting bedsprings. There was wire, chicken wire, barbed wire, bailing wire and wire coat hangers; vacuum cleaner parts, bus...
Read the full transcript
Musical Works
"White Buffalo" by Robert Tree Cody; Copyright 1996 Canyon Records Productions.
