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....