Two lives lost and found

I went to North Lawrence to shoot photographs of Sanitary District 1’s recycling facility for a routine assignment. I hadn’t expected to discover, quite inadvertently, one of those rare stories of human fortitude that leave you perplexed and astounded.

It was a sunny spring day in 1996. The attendant at the recycling facility’s gate said that I should go across the street if I wanted a really good story. I didn’t ask what it might be.

I saw nothing but long dirt mounds across the street. “OK, thanks,” I replied.

Cautiously, I walked across the sparsely traveled road and a patch of dusty earth until I reached a break in the mounds, which were about three feet high and resembled levees that prevent flooding. Suddenly, big black dogs surrounded me on all sides, barking ferociously, which scared the heck out of me.

Slowly, I walked backward. When I got close enough to my car, parked across the street, I dashed for the door, unlocking it with my remote, and jumped in.

A tad out of breath, I drove to the Herald’s offices, which were then in Lawrence. I grabbed my colleague and good friend, Jeff Lipton, and told him I thought there was a great story in a field across from the recycling center. I had no idea what it was. I couldn’t get to it because a pack of wild dogs guarded the field. Would he come with me to help me get past them?

He looked concerned. Perhaps he was thinking I’d been working too hard and needed a long vacation.

Being the intrepid reporter that he is, though, Jeff accompanied me on what appeared to be an insane adventure. We bought a pound of roast beef from a nearby deli and headed to the field. The meat helped to distract the angry dogs.

Once we were past them and the dirt mounds, we entered a surreal maze of dirt paths winding around heaps of rusted-out bicycles and stripped-down cars. The paths led to an Italian sausage truck, where we met Paul Schmitt, sporting a thick beard, a stained T-shirt and jeans and a well-worn baseball cap. Schmitt sat inside the truck’s trailer at a table with four folding chairs. A rifle was hung above his head. It was as if he were a post-apocalyptic survivor.