Landfill tryst

Small town story.

A police lieutenant said one day when he was a patrol officer, he decided to take a check of the town landfill.

“That was back when the town had a landfill,” he said. “Now you have to go all the way to Hunt County if you have something to get rid of, and they have rules about what you can dump. Back then there wasn’t a scale or even anybody out there most of the time. That’s how long back it was.”

Still, he said, the landfill was a place where crime might be committed, drinking or drug use sometimes. So, he took a drive out of town and onto the landfill road.

“The road took a turn or two, and after the second turn I saw a car parked on the other side of the road, faced toward me. I knew who the car belonged to.”

Thing was, he said, when he got closer to the car, the woman driving held up a newspaper, as though reading the paper, so he could not see her face.

“I drove on past her and went to the landfill and drove around. It was empty, so I went back toward the highway.”

When he got near the parked car, the driver positioned her newspaper next to her window, again pretending to read.

“I went past her and then toward the highway, and just before I got to the highway, a pickup turned off, onto the landfill road. I knew who the pickup belonged to, and it was not the woman’s husband.”

The pickup driver, though, did not have a newspaper to hide behind.

“We went past each other and waved,” the lieutenant said.

He went on to the highway and turned and drove back to town.

“The places people go to for their liaisons,” he said. “But a landfill?”