Tammy Hunt saddles up for 'garbage rodeo'
Tammy Hunt is back from the rodeo in Houston.
She rides a forklift, though, not a bucking bronco, and she "ropes" bales of recycled garbage, not cattle.
The event was a "garbage rodeo," an annual event in which employees of Browning-Ferris Industries compete for the title of "World's Best Garbageman."
Ms. Hunt, 25, who works for BFI's recycling plant in Elkridge, was the only woman of the 162 competitors from 31 states and seven countries who qualified for the rodeo. She qualified for the event, held in Houston last month, by coming in first in the forklift category at a regional competition in Atlanta. She didn't place in Houston, but . . .
"I'll be back next year," she promised. "I'm not quitting until I get a trophy from Houston."
Ms. Hunt, a graduate of Southern High School in Baltimore and the mother of two sons, has worked at the Elkridge Recyclery since it opened in 1992, starting as a "sorter" of the materials that come to the plant. One of her supervisors, short on help, decided to teach her how to operate a forklift.
"I love it," she said. "It's never boring."
The rodeo is both a morale booster for employees at the giant waste disposal company as well as a way of improving safety. To qualify for the event, competitors have to go a full year without accidents or injuries.
Ms. Hunt's driving event involved moving her forklift forward and in reverse through a double line of barrels without touching them, and backing it up toward a barricade and stopping at least six inches from it but without hitting it.
Being one of the few women in her field doesn't faze her.
"Sometimes other truckers will look at me and think, 'She's a woman!' " she said. "But I just do my stuff, and they're like, 'Oh, OK.' " The magazine's first cover featured a band called Reporter, which has since vanished from the scene. Hundreds of bands have come and gone, one local music magazine has folded and a half-dozen more have appeared, but Music Monthly goes on, this fall marking 10 years of life on the financial edge.
Sure, publisher Susan E. Mudd says she's been close sometimes to folding the magazine and getting a real job. She stays for the love of the music business. So Music Monthly remains, offering at no charge each month a mix of news and reviews about rock and roll, classical, jazz, pop, country, folk, even marching band music.
It started under another owner as Maryland Musician, eight pages tacked onto the back of Pennsylvania Musician magazine. The owner struggled constantly for money and made a practice of allowing local bands to buy their way onto the cover. He also battled often with the mouthy copywriter he hired away from 98-Rock, this upstart named Mudd whom he kept because she knew the bands, the club owners and worked so cheap.
In 1986 they had their last blowout, and Ms. Mudd took the owner up on his offer to buy him out.
"He wanted 30 grand," says Ms. Mudd, 38. "I gave him 10."
Circulation since then has grown from 10,000 to 32,000, the magazine staving off competition by covering a broader range of music than other similar publications. Along with the many bands that have vanished there have also been many local musical success stories featured in the pages of Music Monthly: Mary Chapin Carpenter, Dennis Chambers, Deanna Bogart and the bands Greenberry Woods and Fugazi, among others.
Ms. Mudd hopes to reach 50,000 circulation to attract more national advertising. And what would it take to get there?
"Money, honey," she says. "I would just like to be able to put out a paper without worrying about money."
Arthur Hirsch