Illegal dumping

One summer day while on my paper route, I was peddling my bike along the back roads of Huntington. I had one customer that was about a half a mile past the Texaco and Marathon Gas stations on the corner Broadway and State Street. There was a new bridge there that crossed over the Wabash River.

On this one occasion I decided to go a little further out into the countryside past my customer’s house, which was out of the way to checkout some new territory. As I peddled my bike I spotted a pile of colorful red bags of unusual rubbish next to a tree off the road about 40 feet.

Being that I was easily distracted by such a find, I rode up to the pile, got off of my bike and started to look through it not realizing how dangerous it could be. The truth was that I had stumbled onto an illegal dump site all from the Huntington Hospital which contained medical supplies such as used needles and syringes, surgical scissors, specimen glass slides and other non- descript items of trash. Then I carefully scooped up some of the interesting items and took them home for play.

Although this site was captivating to say the least to a young kid of 10 or 11, some fool hearted person had deliberately taken it upon themselves to ignore all the disposal rules and regulations for the sake of a quick buck. They deliberately trashed up the countryside which could have put an entire community at risk. This dump site could have been a source of spreading an unusual cocktail of viruses or diseases such as Hepatitis, or Tuberculosis, or fill in the blank as it could have contaminated or caused a sudden death.

Fortunately nothing happened to me but my parents questioned me about what I brought home. They made me get rid of all of it, as they warned me to stay away from such places.

I have found that there are many forms of illegal dumping, one of which is gossip. When people have entrusted each other with important information, it needs to be carefully gathered up to the listening ear and properly disposed of by taking it to God in prayer or by keeping it in confidence until something constructive can be done.

However, when people are irresponsible and intentionally take it upon themselves to ignore all the rules of God for the sake of personal gain, they put individuals as well as entire communities at risk by being the source of spreading a cocktail of confidential information.

Then there are those who are adventuresome and come upon such dump sites (violators) and are exposed to all of the fascinating pieces of information. Then they gather up some of it and take it home to play with only to be the new source of spreading the contamination to innocent bystanders who may not know what they to are about to be exposed to.

Fortunately there are those who are mature and can spot the danger of what has been brought home to play with, and gentle reprimand and warning to stay away can be diplomatically administered. God has labeled gossip as a sin and therefore it needs to be avoided at all cost because of the damage it can cause to others.