The Stars at Night

This gentleman has broken down most everything you can encounter when picking up trash is a suburban setting. Not all these things pertain to slinging trash in the SCO, but it provides a different perspective. Plus this guy tends to keep blog about shit other than his job further breaking the stereotype/judgement that you are summed up by what you do for a living. Or perhaps that is my hang up at the moment...

MORTONS ALT

I can't say that this binge on posting will last. But this weekend has found me not working and doing alot of trash-hole interweb related searches. Which brought me to this article on being "one of us" via this blog by a former garbage man.

Smokin' that rock

Do you remember Fraggle rock?



Marjory, The Trash Heap
The Trash Heap is a wise being, similar to a shaman, that is the garbage dump of the Gorgs. She and her heckling heralds live near the Gorg's garden, and she gives the Fraggles guidance and advice, which the Fraggles regard with reverence, but not worship. She also appears to have some magical abilities (specifically telepathy and the ability to teleport items or Fraggles), though she doesn't use them often.


Iagine if trash had the power of telepathy and would give you advice. You wouldn't even need the internet....

Stay in the NO!

If you are still there and want to be notified when I drag my ass up to the computer send me an email at the address to the right somewhere and I will fill you inbox with garbage related emails. Really care...

Halfway House to Heaven

Recent excellence in my work day:

-We were working on 6Th St between Howard and Folsom, the truck is near full capacity as we head toward the on ramp for 280 and head for the dump. This area has a lot of low income housing, SRO's etc. and the trash is an exceptional blend of old jeans, pornography, shoes, automobile oil containers (empty and full), soiled photo albums, bibles, to go food containers and of course: booze bottles!

So when the truck is full and you run the blade to bring the trash from the hopper into the truck body all the previous trash you have been collecting tends to rush out in a feeble attempt to escape and get back to the life it once knew. There is also "The Squirt" or "The Spray" when large volumes of liquid, usually from a restaurant or a plastic bottle become compressed and the only way for them to go is out the back or sometimes the sides if the truck is really full. When one is hit by the spray its often referred to as "taking a garbage bath". These are all signs that you should have headed to the dump some time ago.

With three more stops I hop off the back of the truck and grab 2 cans from one of the above mentioned low housing complexes, while the blade was running the contents of the first can into the truck body I was futzing with the second can's lock (why would you lock this stuff up?)(I know its to keep it from being strewn about, but I still call IRONICAL on it), just as I turn to set the second can against the tipper I see a wave of liquid, much like the one I glimpsed as my daughter threw up on my eyes a few weeks back, you see it, you know its gonna suck yet you are more inclined to draw a knee up in disgust/recoil than to duck or throw the baby across the room, the former being the wise choice and the later being the difference between happiness and prison. Grape! it was all I could say as I threw my hands up for my partner to stop the truck so I could douse my face/mouth and eyes with water in the middle of 6Th St. at 6am. While fearing contracting that resistant Staph infection that is going around or some rouge form of Hepatitis I come to the conclusion that is accompanied by a faint memory from vomiting in my teen years that I was hit/splashed in my facial orifices by someones left over MD 20/20. The whole way to the dump my partner complained of the grape scent emitting from the passenger side of the truck.

In summary I could/should have said: I got splashed in the face by someones discarded bottle of MD 20/20 and it was not as fun as it could have been provided I was not working at the time it happened. And even that might be too long...


-An uncommon utterance when working at the back of a garbage truck is "Something smells and it is fucking nasty!"

It is not that garbage doesn't stink. It does. But it is a universally similar smell, I suppose you could say that it is the smell of rot or decomposition (it's not a body buddy!) but it rarely varies. Trash rooms have a smell all to themselves. It is a mix of the general garbage funk and stale old heated up simple green or some other cleaner that the super sloshes on the floor when the room is at its hottest.

Depending on how long the trash has been sitting is the deciding factor when determining whether the smell is the inclusive trash stank or the individual items in route to the smell of oneness. Ones that stick out are: dog shit, adult diapers, soiled medical chux and reefer to name a few.

One this particular morning I came out of a garage on Clara and was immediately hit with the heat and smell of something wrong, that is the only way to describe it, I, being the one who was inside the building state to my partner "Something smells and it is fucking nasty!" with a mild/soft question mark on it with hope that he has identified it and could very well stop me from stepping in it or touching it or perhaps point out that I am "it".

He points to the ground about 4 feet behind where we stood and asks "can vegans eat rat?". And there it sat, the culprit. A wet dead rat that had been sitting there being run over time and again emitting a smell that I would imagine a dead body would provided it sat in the rain with its innards exposed to so many tires. Unlike anything I have encountered thus far...

In summary I could/should have said: "I smelled a squished 4 day old rat and it made my nose hairs grow three inches" and that would have been fine...


-Worked 2ND man on a 1 man route the other day. Nice guy, hard fucking route. This guy services the curvy block of Lombard. He made $4000 in tips at Xmas. I am still working on replacing my jaw to where it sat previous to finding this out.

In summary I could/should have said "Some dudes make a boat load of cash in tips from the rich folks." and that still would have been too hard to digest. It would have also made this very late and inconsistent update much shorter, less riddled with typos and bad grammar and left you the reader not wanting you price of admission (valuable time) back....

FIND OUT FOR YOURSELF

Paid family leave is awesome. If you have a child and you have worked at your job for a year and have X amount of hours worked you can take up to 6 weeks off and get paid a percentage of your income 7 days a weeks. Its like disability, or it is disability without the pain and ducking insurance investigators.

Obviously, because this job is seniority based I will never get XMAS off having babies is the only way to make it happen. So we broke out the wand and the magic sparkled upon us and we spent the day Jesus throws his annual kegger on Maui jumping ATV's drinking more beer in one day than usually consumed in one week (still had to be sure I wasn't going to roll over on little one in the night) and introducing our daughter to "local-ism" (this was her 2nd trip there, I waited until I was 27, my mother went with us and she is nearing the decade in which one can retire provided one has played their cards right, and this was her first trip). I actually got sized up on the beach (post haircut) and it was rather entertaining. It has been a while.
Cereal is $5.79 a box and gas is only 20 cents more than here.

Within 48 hours of being back from island styles we drove north up 5 to Mt. Shasta and continued the beer drinking and replaced ATV action for spinning wheels in the snow and stand up drunken driveway sledding. This was little ones first trip to the snow.

Returned home on NYE and crashed early cause that's how we roll and we continued to roll through the week doing little to nothing and accomplishing none of what we said we would (i.e. shelves from Ikea that I just had to get out and buy one morning that are still in the boxes).

So that is where I have been hiding.
Well, there and teetering on the edge of scrapping this blog thing. It sits in the back of my head like neglected chores, bills and family members that fall to the wayside in the beginning of a new relationship.
There is that and the harsh reality that I will never be able to watch TV or read a book again unless the child of the house is sleeping and that only happens when I am asleep myself or gone. Her mobility is bittersweet.

So today was profitable in the "shit I done found in the can" category. First it was a Nixon watch that appeared to only need batteries and seeing that the wife has been wanting a digital wrist watch as opposed to her holographic Timex monocle that she has to be oh so gentle with I took this as a fortuitous sign. I also found a nice solid wood box that had a half dozen drawers that all seemed to be empty with the exception of the bottom one that had jewelry and such in it. I quickly stashed it in the side box of the truck to inspect later. So after the shower and the nap I remembered that I had some booty in the back of the Subaru and if I did not get it right then and there it would suffer the same fate as the tent I found (thats two tents folks!) a few months ago, roling around hitting the dog as we drive around trying to find a place to get coffee and play ball.

Upon inspection we discover 2 Fossil watches, a Timex and a ROLEX SON!!!!
Yeah I said it! R-O-L-E-X! The back of the watch is clear (like a swatch) so you can see the inner most intricacies of its Swiss made movements. This shit is real!

In my head I am freaking out thinking about my new truck and new boots etc. etc.
Now the wife she has one and tends to know how they work so she puts it on and the perpetual winding thing kicks in and the awesome truck starts driving closer to me in my head, meanwhile I am washing dishes so all I can do is salivate at my good fortune.

Until...

I Google "signs of authentic Rolex watches" and the first thing they say is "if there is a glass crystal on the back of the case, so you can see the movement, your watch is fake." Crestfallen! I was almost ready to call this guy and said "lets do this."

That got me thinking about the other items I have come across recently. Folks with money throw away the craziest things, while working Saturday I found a pair of these jeans and it was not the first time either. I'm thinking that I should just sell these on eBay and check to see what the signs of counterfeit jeans are, after a brief tutorial I inspect the jeans to see if the woman that was wearing them was dragging them under neath the heels of her Jimmy Choo's. Looks good, they are still somewhat stiff and showed no "real" wear until I looked inside the jeans, between the legs and saw exactly why she chose to throw them out. I did what no man has ever done. I cursed the thong out loud and with no hesitation ran back to the Google god and asked it how I can get blood stains out of $200.00 jeans.

The Nixon watch works fine with a new battery and makes a nice little beep when it touched upon an hour mark. Thanks for asking.

I need a Gordon Lish in my life...