Rolling Away the Past: A Dumpster Story from Burbank to Santa Monica

The first sound was the clank — metal on metal, a short, hollow note that echoed down our block like a punctuation mark. I stepped onto the front steps of my Echo Park bungalow, the smell of fresh coffee in my hand and the Los Angeles morning stretching wide and bright. In the driveway, a 20-yard roll-off dumpster sat like an intruder at a dinner party: too big, too blunt, and impossibly real. Someone had said