Yankee Hill visitors leave calling cards - welcome and not-so-much
Typically, Lil and I don’t see a soul on our daily walks.
My dog and I encounter wild turkeys, squirrels, ravens, buzzards and quail on the loop hike along Upper Yankee Hill, Five
Mile Creek and Mountain Boy Roads. But very few people.
Once in a great while, however, I come across evidence that I am not the only human out here.
More than a month ago, I found that both Michaela and Anna had visited my trail. First
I found Michaela’s driver’s license a couple of bends beyond my place. Then more than a mile farther down the dirt road, I found Anna’s Adventist Health Pharmacy prescription. I picked up both.
It was time to resurrect my skills as an investigative reporter. Translation: I used Whitepages.com to get phone numbers for the two women.
“Who are you?” asked Michaela, who was not at all happy when I asked her to confirm her birthday. “And how did you get my number?”
“I found your driver’s license,”
I countered, and suddenly a wave of relief washed over the Sonora woman.
“I’ve been wondering what happened to it,” she said. “It was face-up, right in the middle of the road,” I answered, making
arrangements to meet her in Columbia and return the license.
Turned out Michaela and a friend had the day before ridden an ATV down to Five Mile Creek. Somehow her license slipped out on the bumpy, 4.5mile dirt-road trip.
“After I found it was missing, my friend went back up there on his ATV and re-rode the entire road looking for it,” she related. “He never found it.”
Well, when you’re ambling along at 3 mph, I told her, it’s easier to spot such things. “So you must be the old guy I heard about who always walks his dog up there,” Michaela concluded. “Thanks so much!”
So let’s move on to Anna’s prescription, which wasn’t at all hard to find. That’s because it was amid a very visible truckload of trash dumped off the left side of Yankee Hill Road more than a mile beyond pavement’s end.
Unfortunately, it was not the first such midnight mess I’ve seen along my area’s dirt roads. But it was among few, thanks to the prescription, that included both an address (Anna lives on Big Hill, not that far from me) and phone number.
So once I got home, I called her and left a not-so-polite message: I fulminated at length about her misdeed, invited her to clean it up, admitted I had no hope she would return my call, then bid her a curt goodbye.
More than two weeks passed and then, to my great surprise, Anna called. She apologized, but added that she too was a victim. A friend, she explained, had offered to take her trash to the transfer station and had instead dumped it on my road.
“I could not believe it!” she thundered, seething with apparent anger and indignation. “I’ve had it with the guy. I’m not going to have anything more to do with him.”
Her story is familiar: Illegal dumpers careless enough to leave ID amid their messes typically say they paid some sketchy, deceitful third party to take their trash to the dump and had nothing to do with the drive-by mess.
But the high level of Anna’s outrage worked in her favor. As did the fact that she returned my call at all. If she were complicit, why would she bother?
That said, she did not offer to clean the mess. But, knowing I had her name, address and phone, Anna had a concern: “Could this get me in trouble?” she asked. “I doubt it,” I answered.
I kind of wish it would get her in trouble, but I know better: I’ve cleaned up more than a few drive-by dumps here on the hill. And more than once I’ve found IDS and turned them over to the county. Nothing happens.
I did the same in this case, emailing a photo of the incriminating prescription to the county roads division. Nothing happened.
No one has been held accountable and, as of a few days ago, the mess remained.
Normally, I would take on this dirty job myself. But in this case, trash was down a steep slope covered in manzanita and mountain misery. At 75, I am not going there: I might not get back up to the road.
But Saturday morning, Lil and I again took the walk. And the trash was all but gone! Only a few errant scraps of paper remained.
Had the county cleaned it? Had Anna’s ex-friend, consumed by sudden guilt? Or had Anna herself, making amends? Or maybe the Tuolumne County trash crusaders at 1pileatatime made their way up Yankee Hill.
I have no idea, but I thank whomever it was for helping make this neck of the boonies at least a little bit cleaner.
At this point, nearly 900 words into this tale, more than a few Geezer Diary readers may be getting a sense of déjà vu: “Haven’t we read this story before?” they may wonder. “Or something just like it?”
The answer is yes. I have talked trash in this space a few times, and drive-by-dumping tales have been a staple.
Here are the answers to a few more questions: Yes, it would be far, far worse if wildfire ravaged Yankee Hill. Or if waves of burglars and vandals pillaged and trashed our homes. Or if an errant COVID variant decimated our aging population.
So, yes, life here on the hill is good, and I really don’t have a lot to gripe about.
But, as fellow writers know, there’s nothing quite so satisfying as taking to the keyboard and working up a head of self-righteous indignation. And drive-by dumps trigger me every time. I take it personally.
All the above said, I’ll try to wait at least a month or two before my next rubbish rant.
(The first names in the above story have been changed to protect the innocent and not-so-innocent. The last names have been omitted for the same reason, but if I find another truckload of Anna’s trash up here, all bets are off.)