50,000 Plastic Red Tulips

I love going to the dump. I don't know why, I always have, even as a kid. This is the story of one of my more memorable dump runs. It happened a few years back, long after "Nuke the Tulips" bumper stickers faded and peeled from the back of cars. Those bumper stickers showed the true feelings of a lot of us concerning the flood of tourists that descend every spring and clogg-up the roads so bad, that to get to the "Big Town", well, you would only go to the big town if somebody was dying.

The tulips didn't show for the show and the local roads were perfectly drive able. It was big news and there was endless speculating about why they stayed shut. After all, they looked so ripe, compact heads brimming with promise, stout stems and vibrant leaves. It was a great coffee conversation opener, asked with a wry grin: "How about them tulips?" Grown men got to giggling gleefully, or became unusually stoic, as if you had questioned the veracity of the Holy Book. The word got out in Seattle and nobody much was coming; a few demoralized tourists hung about the fields, expecting a miracle. "Any moment now", two weeks after the due date, was the oft repeated refrain. It didn't happen. It wasn't colder than usual, plenty of rain, as usual. Many of us wore secret smiles and pretended concern. You know the saying, one persons' desert is anothers' lack of rain, or something like that, I may have messed that one up. Sorry.
The emerging tulips would signal the beginning of the tourist season. After a long empty winter, the arrival of the spring money was a big deal. I think of it as a kind of salmon run, with lots of nets and hooks angling for tourist dollars. Big buses from Canada brought plenty of wallets and from Seattle, endless droves. Those with the nets, had the most to loose. Us hobby anglers, we weren't quite as upset.
Oh, there were false starts. One morning, the town was in an uproar. The tulips had finally decided to be agreeable and had begun to show color! Turned out that the night previous, some smarteepants smartalecks tipped the tops with a touch of red tint. That stroke of artistic brilliance, well, even I was envious. Next day the fingers of suspicious High School suspects were scrutinized. No clues. Not an artist among 'em.
Oh, experts were consulted and there was a whole lot of head scratching going on. They tried nearly everything, minus Voodoo and Human Sacrifice. Well, far as I know, of course. I imagine that a few prayers were sent heavenwards, too. All to no apparent avail.

Finally, in an act of desperation, it was decided to order plastic stand-ins and after the emergency shipment arrived, volunteers plugged 50,000 red plastic tulips into the ground. Even I volunteered to help out. I brought my camping stove and made hot coffee, cowboy style. For the more adventuresome, a nip of something hidden in a brown bagged bottle, served with a friendly wink. It kept me out of the muddy field and let me survey the scene developing. And you should have seen it, scores of poor pluggers, each with ten pounds of gooey mud stuck to each boot, mud brown to the waist, wet and waddling like dejected ducks down the furrows. It was a comedy of errors and a righteous introduction to farming for many. By the end of that drizzly, cold morning, any longing for tulips was replaced by silent curses, some of them not so silent.

When the deed was done, everybody came to look, everybody from around here, that is. The fake tulips looked terrible; an expanse of washed-out-red plastic atrocities, just painful to look at. You know how good ideas, when acted on, often show a fatal flaw? Along with the endless gray clouds, a pallor of defeat hung over the town. It became known as the "Great Tulip Folly". Some were cheering for a yearly repeat.

Finally, the tulip stand-ins had to be harvested, as the farmers couldn't just plow all that plastic under. Of course, they tried to give the plastic away, but what are you gonna do with fifty thousand plastic tulips? Nobody volunteered, preferring to just forget the whole incident. A handful of Mexican migrant laborers had to be hired to retrieve the unwanted blooms and since I speak Spanish, I was to supervise the whole operation. It was hard explaining to the Mexicans what the logic was, to all those plastic flowers. I got a little money and escorted the truck full of folly to the dump. I love going to the dump. I smiled all the way there and back.