As I write, I'm sitting in the cab of a rental truck, with the notebook in my lap. It is Ferry Day, and it is Dump Day. Matinicus Island is served by the Maine State Ferry Service, but we get only 30-some-odd trips a year. No matter how many times we try to explain this, there is always somebody calling up from the mainland and asking "So, what time's the morning boat?" as if every morning we…well, you understand. Sometimes this question even comes out of the mouths of reporters, writers, and well-intentioned experts who claim to speak for the island communities, but that is a rant for another time. Suffice it to say that unlike Vinalhaven, North Haven and Islesboro, there is no sequence of daily commuter ferry options. Some folks on those larger islands find themselves ill-used when they are shorted one trip a day. We, with our scattered and merely occasional vehicle ferry runs, sometimes roll our eyes at that, but to be fair, once you have plans around a certain schedule, interrupting it is more than just an inconvenience…it could potentially mean not making it to school or work on time, or not making it home at night. We are not talking about the vacationers here.

This time, I have been up since the wee hours, as has everybody else who rides out to Matinicus on this particular ferry. The ferry vessel North Haven loaded in Rockland at 7a.m.. The passengers have driven up from Wiscasset and Durham and Mount Vernon and who knows where else. I spent the night before on a relative's couch in South Thomaston. We all met in the ticket line at 6:45; the ferry service doesn't like to give us our tickets until the day of the trip. Still, we've had our vehicle reservations for weeks or even months; in my case, three months. This boat can only carry about seven vehicles, and only three of them can be trucks which require the center line, as does mine; ferry day is no time for taking chances. Of course, that early hour is not the regular load time…there is no regular load time. Our ferry schedule, which looks strangely random to the uninitiated, is based on the tides, as the Matinicus wharf cannot be accessed at low tide. No ferry captain is willing to chance a grounding, of course, and the ferry just barely fits into our harbor, and Dexter's Ledge is right in the way, and the fog, sometimes…so the plans are as a rule to get here on a still-coming tide, unload and re-load as quickly as is humanly possible, and get, as hastily as can be managed, the heck out of Dodge.By the way, the name of the boat is the North Haven. It is not going to North Haven. That does confuse people, from time to time, including disgruntled lawyers headed for real estate closings (on North Haven) who find themselves trapped for five hours on a hungry round-trip to Matinicus.

I have a Budget rental box truck containing assorted freight for various people and for the Matinicus power company. The ferry service guys ask me what I carry. I have a big circuit breaker in a crate, about the size of a large washing machine. I have a reel of cable. I have a refrigerator. I have a rolled-up carpet, some mulch hay, and a thing that looks like a steel table with an electric cord coming off of it which is in fact a coal forge for a blacksmith shop. In the cab, I have a fax machine for the town office and a pile of stuff from the hardware store; those things didn't need to come by truck, of course, but everything else did. Refrigerators do not easily fit into the Cessna 206 that flies our mail.

With the help of a lot of good folks who dropped what they were doing n the middle of a workday to assist when the ferry got to Matinicus, we unload all the freight and quickly re-load the truck with recyclables from the island's three recycling-program storage sheds. We load huge bags of #2 plastic milk jugs and detergent bottles; we load cartons full of glass and newspaper and junk mail; we load dozens of banana boxes filled with returnable wine and beer bottles; we load Styrofoam; we load half a truckload of corrugated cardboard. The fluorescent lamps and the busted chainsaws and the dead car batteries will have to wait until next time. This will all go to Rockland, which has been good enough to allow us to participate in their recycling system for the past several years. I will unload this truck, carefully, at seven different stops around the Rockland Transfer Station, then to the Touch of Glass redemption center, then get the truck back to the rental place as quickly as I can. The money from the returnables goes to the island school trip fund, or to the church, or to the EMS service, in turn.

I do this roughly every two months. As recycling catches on, the trips are becoming more frequent.On the ferry with me, headed back to Rockland, are two dead pickup trucks. The plan, we hear, is that they will be spliced together into one usable vehicle. Somebody with a wrecker is supposed to be waiting for the ferry on that side.

The ferry captain realized that we will be a few minutes ahead of schedule getting into Rockland this time, which is an extraordinarily rare occurrence…but, the Vinalhaven boat will be right behind us, and there is only one place to unload, so we cannot sit at the ramp ("in the pen," they call it,) waiting for the tow trucks slated to arrive at the planned time. My truck is trapped behind those junkers.

"Do you know the number for Shorty's Towing?" the captain inquired of me, just guessing that the old trucks' owner may have used this company as we'd used it frequently for island vehicles.

"No, not off the top of my head…but, I have a phone book."

"You have a phone book with you in that truck?"

I've learned never to do these freight and dump runs without a phone book. Sometimes I have to call the scale shack, possibly Knowlton's warehouse or the rental agent if the boat's running late, maybe the Keag store for a pizza…

"Cool!"

Of course, Shorty's Towing didn't know what we were talking about. I didn't know whose trucks those were, so we called Paul on the island, who told us they were Troy's, and he was out to haul, so we called Troy's mother in the post office, who told us which towing company was supposed to meet the ferry. We called them, and they were right there with the flatbed wrecker when the North Haven arrived in Rockland, back from Matinicus, five hours from when we started. My day had barely begun; we'll talk more "trash" another time.

Eva Murray, who operates Freeboard Logistics (with tongue firmly in cheek,) the world's tiniest freight handling company, has been named the town's "Garbage Czar."

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