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6-Year-Old's Birthday Party Held at Dump

LOS ANGELES (AP) - When 6-year-old Michael Wong-Sasso grows up, he wants to be a trash collector.

So naturally, he wanted to have his birthday party at the local dump.

About 40 children and their parents gathered Saturday at the Sunshine Canyon Landfill to celebrate Michael's seventh birthday.

"I like the big trucks," he said. "I like putting trash where it belongs. I like making the world cleaner."

For safety and sanitary reasons, the party was held in a small valley on the landfill's outskirts, away from bulldozers and strange smells. The partygoers were surrounded by scores of potted trees, which are used to landscape the landfill.

The children fashioned flour-dough animals with the help of recycled materials such as cardboard and colored paper and frolicked on a big pile of "clean" dirt, playing with toy backhoes and earthmovers.

"We don't know where this interest in trash came from," said Michael's mother Sophia Wong. "He's been this way since he was 2."

Having a party at a dump is "definitely different," said Scott Krause, who brought his 6-year-old son, Trevor.

"It's not like you're saying, `Oh no, not another birthday at the landfill,'" Krause said. "I mean, how many times can you go to Chuck E. Cheese's?"