Some 50 years ago when I first moved to West Tisbury, the late Willis Gifford was a dinner guest one night. He chuckled as he looked down at the aqua and pink ironstone plate in the Singapore Bird pattern. Singapore Bird was my wedding china.

“Looks familiar,” Willis said. “My wife Betty and I had this china too, but over time, pieces got chipped and cracked. Betty said I should take it all to the dump and leave it on top for someone not so fussy as she was to have. So I did just that. A week later, we were invited to dinner by neighbors, and our dinner was served on our old Singapore Bird plates. We knew it was our old china of course, because we knew where all the cracks and chips were.”

Those were the days when abandoned treasures were left at the top of the dump pit for interested takers before all was shoveled off into a pit and burned. Among my treasures from those times are two iron skillets and an ironstone gem pan for corn muffins. Eventually, burning was banned back and huge dumpsters were installed for people to throw black plastic garbage bags — some with unknown treasures inside. The bags are hauled away to some unknown faraway spot by huge trucks. Some treasures are still saved at the Dumptique, but others are gone forever.

Another treasure of mine — a dilapidated address book with interesting addresses and telephone numbers including one for President Richard M. Nixon — was mistakenly thrown into the trash relatively early in the dumpster period. The Nixon material was acquired not because I was an admirer but because he once came to the Vineyard, ostensibly to look for property. I interviewed him and he gave me his address and phone number in case I had questions to ask later. There were also addresses and telephone numbers of old friends and acquaintances in foreign lands — friends from Ethiopia, former East Germany, Poland, Zimbabwe, the Ivory Coast, Iran — countries I had visited on extensive travels.

Incredibly, the address book was rescued by a patient West Tisbury dump worker.

Learning of my plight, he poked with a pike at slippery red-handled and black-handled garbage bags one Saturday morning until he found my garbage bag. I learned that once an airplane ticket had been rescued too. Nowadays giant trucks quickly, noisily haul away the dumpsters full of big black bags that have been hurled down into them. So a few Sundays ago I thought there was no hope of ever seeing a favorite black glove that had tumbled into the plastics and cans dumpster bin at the West Tisbury dump. All the same, I mentioned to Kirsten Norman, who was collecting dump fees and dump tickets that Sunday, that I had dropped my glove in with the bottles and cans.

“I’ll see if I can get it back for you,” she said to my surprise. And she did. The following Sunday it was there for me at the entrance ticket booth. It had been raked out by Kirsten before the can and bottle dumpster had been hauled away.

Chatting with Hunter Thomas, who was in charge the Sunday that I retrieved my glove, I learned that even these days there can be precious rescues from the West Tisbury dump. Last summer, he recalled, a wedding dress was mistakenly thrown out during a housecleaning.

“It was in a garment bag and the person throwing it out didn’t know that a wedding dress was in the bag, of course. As soon as what had happened was learned we were asked if we could help and we set to work to find it.”

Miraculously (or so it seemed to all involved) with help from Don Welch and with A.J. DeBettencourt poking and looking, the missing wedding dress was retrieved. And according to a guest at the bride’s fall wedding, she looked radiant in her beautiful-dump-rescued white wedding dress.

All hail West Tisbury’s dump workers.