THE RECYCLING center is back to operating as it did in the good old days thanks to residents who can, and will, sort their recyclable items. Purists love it because products made from separated stuff are better quality. The Center is dividing paper into newspaper, boxboard (such as cereal boxes), corrugated cardboard and the rest of it is called “junk mail” be it clean white paper or true junk mail. Pizza boxes are trash. Food boxes coated in wax are trash.

After delivering stuff into the various containers and driving home, I realized that my nice pale blue wastebasket was still at the center so back went the car, the door swung shut, the keys were locked inside with the motor running and the radio blaring. I had reclaimed the blue wastebasket but forfeited the car.

A friend drove me home so I could look for a spare key and Triple A number. Turned out, the spare key was also locked in the car. The man who answered the phone at Triple A 800 number said he threw his car keys away one time. “Never found them,” he said.

Back at the Center, I waited the local Triple A guy. Empty and ghostly, the car hummed. The radio blared. The cold rain continued. The manager offered tea and explained their paper recycling procedures. Rain hitting the roof of the giant containers was noisy but comforting. The pink blush on the apple trees near the Center will be in bloom by the time you read this. The Dog was a rush of white water.

Guy Martin of North Main Auto, truly a Triple A Guy, arrived. He said he’d locked his keys in his truck the week before, along with tools he uses to open locked doors. He called On Star. “They’re way out in Chicago or someplace,” he said, “but they popped open a door for me.”

It’s distressing that a car idling an hour while all this took place canceled any good done in the act of recycling

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Gloria Maloney, who once reported Northfield Falls doings for the News said she and hubby Bob “Were just up on Maple Hill, Plainfield, visiting friends who still have snow lined up on the deck where it had fallen from the edge of the roof”. Gloria has been digging dandelion greens and planned on at least one more meal before snow hit the Falls again last week.

Gloria said, “It’s truly nice to have at least one person who deserves a blue ribbon for the biggest and best Forsythia bush in the Falls. Norma Ryan is your winner again this year.” Gloria is all the more envious because she has tried so hard with her own bush, moving it around the yard several times over the years, pruning and grooming it with no results.

We checked it out and concluded that Mrs. Ryan indeed has a winning Forsythia this year. It’s the same glorious yellow that children use when coloring the sun.

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Mondays, licensed manicurist, Cheri O’Neill, is offering manicures and pedicures, such as one would receive in a spa, at the Senior Center. Cheri is the daughter of Kenny and Patti Ryan of town.

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The men from the company that the Town hired to trim trees threatening wires hanging between utility poles have been busy with their electronic hatchets. They hacked a maple to relieve it of dead branches in this reporter’s front yard (with her reluctant consent). The flat-sided results, in this yard, and across town, are practical not aesthetic.

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