Garbage Day

Friday is the day when the old town's waste management professionals pay a visit to the Sack.

Early in the morning, a crew arrives to either empty the compost bins or take away the regular garbage. These items are dealt with on alternate weeks. Later in the day, a different crew always arrives to pick up the recyclable goods.

There is great diversity in the Sack when it comes to the matter of garbage.

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Ben and Norma seem hellbent on destroying the planet as quickly as possible.

On garbage day, they leave massive amounts of garbage at the curb. Quite often, they'll place additional garbage at the curbs of their more conservation-minded neighbours.

No one is quite sure why Ben and Norma have so much garbage. There are only two of them in one house, so it's a very perplexing matter.

Oscar thinks something nefarious might be afoot. He believes that Ben is importing "outside garbage" into the Sack. Since Ben is a military man, Oscar thinks he might be disposing of something on the military's behalf. Ben is a senior cook in the Canadian Forces, so I remain doubtful about this.

Nevertheless, Oscar accuses him of "garbage laundering."

***

Florence tells me that Norma enjoys shopping at Walmart.

In fact, she said that it's really more of a hobby for Norma than a consumer activity. Apparently, Norma goes to Walmart at least twice a week. Florence says she buys "all kinds of crap," whether she and Ben need it or not.

It could be that Ben and Norma are throwing out their old crap every week to make space for the new crap. This is far more credible than secret military garbage.

***

Big Doug, on the other hand, puts out an impossibly small amount of garbage each week. Neither does he seem to recycle nor compost anything. He has a compost bin in his garage, but we've never seen it at the curb.

Where does Big Doug's garbage go? Your guess is as good as mine.

It's unlikely that he simply doesn't generate much garbage. This is a man who's suspected of using plutonium as a lawn fertilizer.

Oscar says it's possible that Big Doug is really an alien who can consume his own garbage. I suppose anything is possible, but I remain doubtful about this, too.

***

Little Doug is a man of great independence as far as garbage is concerned.

While everyone else places their garbage out on Thursday night or Friday morning, Little Doug refuses to be held to convention. He seems to look at garbage collection day as a vague recommendation, rather than a rule.

Last Saturday, he left a bag of garbage at the curb. It was only twenty-four hours since the Sack's garbage was collected and almost two weeks before it would be collected again.

This is a very common behaviour on Little Doug's part. He puts his garbage out when it suits him. He knows it's going to be picked up eventually. He's just not that interested in when it'll happen.

***

Of course, this doesn't mean that Little Doug has no interest in garbage. In fact, it is quite the contrary.

Little Doug can be safely described as an avid and experienced dumpster diver. He likes to drive around the neighbouring streets looking at other people's garbage. If he sees an item that interests him, he'll bring it home.

Weed says Little Doug has brought home all manner of other people's garbage. Apparently, he tends to favour electronics and wooden furniture, but by no means does he restrict himself to these items. He likes to tinker with the electronic stuff and refurbish the wooden things. Weed says there are numerous inoperable VCRs in Little Doug's garage, along with a host of unmatched kitchen chairs.

Little Doug once brought home a set of encyclopedias. The big volumes were contained in a large cardboard box. Weed said they were published in the late 1970s and smelled like cat pee. Little Doug thought the books would be helpful to Weed and Daisy, since both were going to college at the time. Weed was enrolled in a computer program and Daisy was studying dental hygiene.

Weed said Little Doug put the box of books out on the curb the next day, which, again, would have been a Saturday. The Sack's cats spent the next week peeing on the books some more.

***

Last year, residents of the Sack held a street sale.

A first one had been held a few years before. Two years seems to be the right amount of time to consume enough crap to hold another one. Non-Sack residents buy Sack people's crap and eventually sell it again at their own yard sales.

This is how the crap goes around.

***

Despite being advised of the street sale, it was all a big surprise to Little Doug. About half way through the sale hours, he hauled out a large number of items onto his driveway.

Sack residents maintained their own selling areas, but occasionally floated about to talk and inspect each other's inventory of goods. When Oscar looked at Little Doug's stuff, he found a stereo he had discarded several years ago. He also found a broken exercise machine that his wife, G.W. had tossed away a few months earlier.

Ben ended up buying a small bookcase from Little Doug. He took it back to his own driveway where Norma had a chance to see it for the first time. She told Ben to take it back to Little Doug, as soon as she laid eyes on it.

Apparently, Ben had just purchased a bookcase they used to own a few years ago. Norma had thrown it out when they got a new wall unit for their livingroom. Little Doug gave Ben his money back, but apparently wasn't too pleased about it.

***

Oscar has thrown out a few large household items over the last year or so.

Sometimes, the waste management professionals won't accept certain items. Apparently, one must make separate arrangements for these items and, usually, pay a small fee for the privilege of removal.

Last summer, Oscar left a refrigerator on his curb for collection. Refrigerators are one of the items that requires special arrangements. When the waste management professionals arrived, Oscar offered each of them a T-shirt, if they would dispose of the refrigerator.

The three-man crew left the truck and inspected the T-shirts. Oscar had received the shirts from his company for promotional purposes. A deal was eventually struck and the refrigerator was duly removed from Oscar's curb.

If you're ever driving around the old town and see a waste management crew wearing black "Canadian Club Whisky" T-shirts, you'll know you're not very far away from the Sack.

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