Have you gone past Buckley Park lately? There’s this mountain of broken sleds and snow saucers forming the base of the hillside. Did the city of Durango establish a new plastic recycling site? Do you think we could start dropping off our glass there and create an additional pile? – Keepin’ It Classy
Between snowstorms last week, Action Line trekked to the winter wonderland that is Buckley Park, and you’re not kidding about the debris.
It’s a MESS, which stands for Mountain of Eighty-sixed Saucers and Sleds.
There must have been two dozen of them in various pieces – all left in a pile, along with several large sheets of soggy cardboard.
So naturally, it’s a single-stream recycling station.
And what a colorful addition to the bleak winter snowscape with a riot of orange, lime green, blue. Very ’80s – so just in time for Snowdown.
But before taking your jars and bottles to join the junked plastic at Buckley, we checked in with our good friend Cathy Metz, director of Durango Parks & Recreation.
“Hi Cathy, it’s Action Line. Just confirming. Has the city has established Buckley Park as a new location for recycling or a glass drop-off?”
Cathy’s response: “Uh. Yah-no.
“We want to make recycling convenient, for sure. But not in the middle of a city park,” Cathy deadpanned. Then she burst out in laughter.
Laughter is the best medicine these days, especially when school is canceled for two days straight. Guess where the kids end up?
The Rec Center, Chapman Hill and Buckley Park.
“We’ve been so busy moving snow that we haven’t had the time to pick up people’s trash,” she added with a chuckle.
In any case, with Friday’s snow, the MESS got buried and will resurface when the weather warms. Or it’ll just grow bigger as saucy saucerers add to the heaps of recreational flotsam and jetsam.
Action Line suggested that Parks & Rec take advantage of the situation by offering a winter archaeology class for kids: Searching for Saucers of the Ancients.
After all, archaeology is all about digging for pieces of broken bowls and other stuff. Why not unearth saucer shards?
In any case, if you head to Buckley with cheap, flimsy plastic stuff, keep in mind there are two – count ’em, two – trash cans located nearby.
They just happen to be near the sidewalk and not at the base of the sledding hill.
Or look for a triangular symbol on your busted-up saucer and deposit it with your other recyclables.
Just don’t leave it there in the park because it tempts others to do the same.
When it comes to littering, that’s the slippery slope.
H H H
It’s a red-letter day for the Mea Culpa Mailbag. And by red letter, we mean typos. Just as we fix one, another one comes up.
First, the fixed typo. Our good friend Jordan Townsend notes that the “Totten Reservior” sign east of Cortez has been replaced with one that spells “reservoir” correctly.
“I hope I’m not preaching to the chior here,” he notes. “But it’s worth celebrating with a nice bottle of pinot nior.”
Let’s not party just yet. A kind reader gently noted a foul vowel transposition in the Action Line Christmas poem.
The doggerel contained the phrase “per deim.” Even though it’s pronounced “per DEE-im,” the proper spelling is “per diem.”
You know who caught it? The guy who knows about this: Our good friend LeRoy Diem!
Send Action Line to the farm team to recover from Old McDonald Syndrome: E-I-E-I- Oh, no!
Email questions to actionline@durangoherald.com or mail them to Action Line, The Durango Herald, 1275 Main Ave., Durango, CO 81301. You can request anonymity if you remember when winter recreation meant a wooden toboggan, red Flexible Flyer sled or a Snurfer.
