My mother's trashy experience

On the first day of university summer break my mother arrived home to Glace Bay, Cape Breton with all of her worldly belongings in tow. Among other things this included her six pairs of jeans that she had carried home in an old, beat-up garbage bag. She decided to save unpacking for later and sat down to relax after a long, hard year of studies. This is the legendary story of my mother and the determination that led her to the dump.

She settled in to have some good homemade food and relaxed for the rest of the day. It was not until the next morning that she decided it might be a good time to unload her belongings when she noticed that her trusty garbage bag was not where she had left it. After scouring the house for twenty-minutes, a sickening feeling started to develop in the pit of her stomach. Had she heard the garbage truck this morning? Would someone have actually thrown away her prized jeans?

A hasty ten minute drive landed her square in the middle of the Glace Bay dump…and in the middle of the search of her life. It was one of the more entertaining days for the garbage men as they gathered to watch this mad women searching through dirty diapers and yesterdays left-overs.

She searched for hours without thinking anything of it. Using addresses on pizza boxes she slowly narrowed her search first to the right area of town and finally the right street. In the heat, with garbage men staring at her and with her mother disapprovingly waiting at home, my mother found that one garbage bag in a heap of thousands. She will tell you today she would do it again in a second. As she often comments jeans were a hot commodity then and unlike today, people did not own a pair of jeans for every occasion.

It was a day that most would never mention again for the rest of their lives. It is a day that I have heard about more often then I care to mention, because this is a story of determination and succeeding when everything is against you.