[00:00.00Text The Trashman
[00:03.81]Saturday,April 7
[00:07.16]Steve and I hauled trash for four solid hours without a break of any sort,
[00:13.64]except for about five mintes when we stopped to talk.
[00:18.18]We got eight hours of pay for cleaning up
[00:22.54]our route no matter how little time it took.
[00:26.07]My shoulder hurt badly each time I put another full barrel on it,
[00:31.95]and my legs occasionally shook as I started out to the street.
[00:36.91]But all the rest of me said,"Go,trashman,go."
[00:41.77]I could not have guessed that there would be joy in this.
[00:46.45]Dump.Lift.Walk.Lift.Walk.The hours went by quickly.
[00:53.71]Saturday meant that most adults were at home on the route.
[00:58.25]So were school-age children.
[01:01.70]I thought this might mean more talk back and forth as I made the rounds today.
[01:07.58]There were many people outdoors,working in their gardens.
[01:12.44]Most of them looked friendly enough.
[01:15.89]While I wouldn't have time to talk at length,
[01:19.73]there was time to exchange the greetings that go with civilized ways.
[01:25.29]That is where I got my shock.
[01:28.76]I said hello in quite a few yards before the message sank
[01:33.73]in that this wasn't the thing to do.
[01:37.38]Occasionally,I got a straight man-to-man or woman-to-man reply
[01:43.34]from someone who looked me in the eye,smiled,and asked either
[01:48.49]"How are you?or"Isn't this a nice day?"
[01:53.35]I felt human then.But most often the response was either nothing at all,
[01:59.72]or a look of surprise that I had spoken and used familiar words,
[02:05.36]or a friendly hello.
[02:08.42]Both men and women stared at me and said nothing.
[02:12.68]A woman in a housecoat was startled as I came around the corner of her house.
[02:18.14]At the sound of my greeting,
[02:21.37]she gathered her housecoat tightly about her and moved quickly indoors.
[02:27.83]I heard the lock click.
[02:30.99]Another woman had a strange,large animal in her yard.
[02:35.45]I asked her what kind of dog it was.She gaped at me.
[02:40.60]I thought she was hard of hearing and asked my question louder.
[02:45.36]She seemed a little frightened before she turned coldly away.
[02:50.21]The nice response came from women alone.
[02:54.18]From the way they replied and asked after my health,
[02:58.63]I knew that at the day's end when they listed the nice things they had done,
[03:03.90]there would be a place on the list for"I spoke to the trashman today.
[03:09.54]Steve spoke spontaneously about these things on the long ride to the dump.
[03:15.29]The way most people look at you,you'd think a trashman was a monster.
[03:21.53]Say hello and they stare at you in surprise.They don't know we're human.
[03:27.60]"One lady had put ashes from the fire in her trashcan.
[03:32.64]I said we couldn't take them.She said,
[03:36.89]'Who are you to say what goes?You're nothing but a trashman.'
[03:42.35]I told her,'Listen,lady,I've got an I.Q.of 137,
[03:48.91]and I graduated near the top of my high school class.
[03:53.67]I do this for the money,not because it's the only work I can do.'
[03:59.31]"I want to tell them,'Look,I am as clean as you are,'
[04:04.06]but it wouldn't help.I don't tell anyone I'm a trashman.
[04:08.92]I say I'm a truck driver.
[04:12.29]My family knows,but my in-laws don't.
[04:16.84]If someone comes right out and asks.
[04:20.39]'Do you drive for a trash company?'I say yes.
[04:25.43]I believe we're doing a service that people need,
[04:29.66]like being a police officer or fire fighter.
[04:33.89]I'm not ashamed of it,but I don't go around boasting about it either.
[04:39.33]"A friend of my wife yelled at her kid one day
[04:43.45]when they were running out to meet a trash truck.
[04:47.61]'Stay away from those trashmen.They're dirty.'
[04:51.97]I was angry with her.'They're as good as we are,'I told her.
[04:57.25]'You seem to have a lot of sympathy for them,'she said.
[05:01.51]'Yes,I do.'But I never told her why."
[05:06.78]Our truck was packed full before noon.
[05:10.83]We drove to the dump,were back on the route by 1:00,
[05:16.40]and had finished for the day by 2:00.
[05:20.05]I had planned to stay at this job for only two days.
[05:24.41]But now I'm going to stay.The exercise is great.
[05:29.17]The lifting gets easier with every load,even if my left shoulder stays sore.
[05:35.33]I become faster and neater as time goes by.
[05:39.77]I'm outdoors in clean air.
[05:43.61]And,contrary to what people think,I don't get dirty on the job.
[05:48.45]I have made up my mind,too,to go on saying hello in back-yards.
[05:54.09]It doesn't do any harm,and it still feels right.
[05:58.45]Frankly,I'm proud.
[06:01.82]I'm doing an essential task,"like a police officer or a fire fighter."
[06:07.99]I left this country a little cleaner than I found it this morning.
[06:13.13]Not many people can say that tonight.
[06:16.79]John Gardener has said that a society which praises its philosophers
[06:22.96]and looks down on its plumbers is in for trouble.
[06:27.32]"Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water,"he warns.
[06:32.28]He might have gone a step further and called for respect for both our economists
[06:38.03]and our trashmen;
[06:40.98]otherwise they'll both leave trash behind. |