A decade or more ago, I was asked to take part in a children's literacy event in Clinton, and spent a very pleasant sunny summer morning at Reg Conn Park telling stories to kids.
One of the stories was about a mysterious monster that used to be spotted beside B.C.'s highways. It was a very friendly monster, I explained, one that loved to be visited by children and which ate garbage. I said that there used to be a lot of them, but now there were only a few, and that one lived near Ashcroft Manor. Since it was a bit lonely these days, what with its brothers and sisters having vanished over the years, it liked nothing more than being waved at by children as they passed by.
I was referring, of course, to the Garbage Gobblers which were once a common sight around B.C. Besides the one at the Manor, the only others I can think of that still exist are in the public works yard at McLeese Lake (right hand side of Highway 97 as you head north out of the community) and in front of a provincial government office in Kamloops behind the courthouse. (If there are more examples around, I would love to hear about them.)
I seem to belong to a number of Facebook pages and groups devoted to old photographs of B.C., and I guarantee you that no pictures on those sites garner more comments and likes than ones depicting the Garbage Gobbler. They were indeed a magnet for children: many of the photos show kids gleefully sticking their hands, arms, and even heads into the Gobbler's capacious maw.
Less well-known today is "The Junior Gobbler", which was a paper bag measuring 13" tall by 7" wide with a hole punched through the top. On one side was an orange-and-green Gobbler wearing a bib urging people to "Hang Me In Your Car" under a banner reading "The Junior Gobbler Says Feed Me!" The intent, of course, was to hang the bag over the handle of a car window and put garbage in it during road trips, rather than dropping it by the roadside.
It also bore the messages "Keep B.C. Green And Clean" and "Help Prevent Forest Fires!", while the back had a drawing of the province and the information that B.C. had more then eight million acres dedicated to recreation: "Be a welcome guest and leave your campsite clean!" The bags were readily available, and free, and when my family travelled B.C.'s highways in the late 1960s and early 1970s, my brother and I would almost come to blows as to which of us got to deposit the filled Junior Gobbler in one of its larger siblings.
How do I know the size and message of the Junior Gobbler so precisely? Because a pristine, never-used one is in front mf me as a I type, thanks to my mother, who preserved it. It is part of what has, somewhat to my surprise, become a small private collection of Gobbler items, which includes a GG hoodie, a GG throw-cushion, two original pieces of artwork featuring the Gobbler at the Manor, and a one-of-a-kind 9" tall 3D-printed Gobbler my son commissioned for me as a birthday gift.
The Gobblers (Garbage and Junior), which were launched in time for B.C.'s centenary in 1958, were probably one of the first major government-sponsored "green" initiatives, but that's not why they were (and still are) so popular. They're beloved because they were whimsical, and fun, and brought a smile to the face of many: the young, and the young at heart.
Some months after my Clinton storytelling session, a woman approached me at the Ashcroft Fall Fair. Wasn't I the woman who had told the story about the Garbage Gobblers? When I said yes, she told me her children had heard me talk, and that afterwards, when they drove past the Garbage Gobbler at the Manor, they had waved to it, so it wouldn't feel lonely. The magic lives on.
