If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then to Dennis Kelleher the new Bigfork green-box garbage collection site is Buckingham Palace and he’s king of the castle.

Kelleher has been the site monitor for the Bigfork facility since it opened a year ago as a fenced and staffed site. He loves his job so much he has worked seven days a week since May, with only four days off throughout the entire summer.

The county is trying to hire a second attendant to split the workload at the seven-day-a-week site, but for now Kelleher is it and he doesn’t mind a bit.

“It’s the greatest job you could ever have,” Kelleher gushed, sporting a neon orange T-shirt that identifies him as the man in charge. “You’re your own boss. The job is what you make it.”

A former building contractor, Kelleher, 65, said he relishes visiting with folks as they drop off their garbage. And there are a lot of people who use the new site. Even on weekday afternoons, there is a steady flow of vehicles coming and going. Weekends are especially busy.

“It’s all about people, not about garbage,” he stressed.

Kelleher uses his job to help educate green-box users about the recycling options available at the site and what can and can’t be dropped off. He explains and enforces landfill policies and procedures.

It’s also his job to squelch any “Dumpster diving.”

“I put on 6 miles a day so I get paid to exercise,” he said, surveying the large site. “I spend very little time in my shack. I’m a monitor and educator and you can’t do that from inside the building.”

Kelleher takes an immense amount of pride in the facility that Flathead County spent $888,800 to build at the insistence of the Bigfork community. When the county planned to close the former unfenced and overcrowded green-box site along Montana 83, the community rallied to keep its refuse site and agreed to pay an additional $47.84 annually per residential unit to shoulder the financial load.

Thanks to Kelleher’s oversight, the new green-box facility is neat as a pin.

“I mow all the grass [at the entrance], not because I have to but because it looks nice. And it’s more exercise for me,” he said. “All the green boxes were painted recently, so it looks nice. They’re really getting their money’s worth.”

Kelleher also pointed out how secure the new site is, with not only a chain-link fence surrounding the site but also the barbed wire and four strands of electric wire aimed at keeping both people and animals out after hours.

Even though Kelleher doesn’t hole up in his tiny shelter, he does have a flat-screen TV, mini-fridge and other amenities he’s paid for with his own money.

“The other day I was sitting here, eating my shrimp cocktail and looking out the window, and I thought, it doesn’t get any better than this,” he said, pointing out the panoramic view of the site west of the Little Brown Church and the serenity of the cemetery that abuts the fence.

“I always say it’s a good day because I’m on this side of the fence,” he said with a laugh, referring to the nearby cemetery.

Kelleher also finds humor in the fact that the container reserved for “Ashes Only,” sits right by the fence near the cemetery.

Kelleher lives on the Swan River, just 20 feet from the water’s edge. “But I don’t fish,” he points out. “I just enjoy my quiet time there.”

He relocated from his home state of Massachusetts to the Flathead Valley in the mid-1980s. Earlier in his career he was a policeman for eight years. He spent many years in the building industry, but got out of the contracting business when the recession hit a few years ago — and never looked back.

It’s the little things that make his job fun. Recently Kelleher saw someone had dropped off a life-sized cardboard cutout of the Dos Equis beer spokesman — “The most interesting man in the world” — so he placed the cutout by the green-box signs to bring attention to the rules.

But darned if someone didn’t steal the Dos Equis man just the other day.

“People do try to steal things,” he said. He has a wooden chain-saw bear that greets green-box users chained to the office building.

Kelleher spent $40 out of his own pocket for a smiley-face sign on the side of the attendant building. And through the months people have dropped off a few huge stuffed animals and a decoy deer that serve as a comical welcoming committee to the site.

“I get more mileage out of those things,” he said. “This is a happy place.”

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.