DUMPSTER DIVER

One of my favorite places to be in my apartment is out on my balcony. Hot, cold, sunny, rainy (it has a roof so I don’t get wet), it is always a pleasure to relax out there, read out there, and even eat out there.  I have a three-seat iron café’ table for that purpose.  Also a chaise lounge and a swivel chair.  Mostly I am on the chaise lounge, but when the sun starts to go down through the tall thick trees that on the dividing line between this apartment complex and the condominiums next door, I sit in the swivel chair so the sun doesn’t shine in my eyes until sunset.  I had installed party lights around the ceiling overhead, enough that I can read out there after dark.

 

During the coved lockdowns (and still now), I spent a lot more time out there on the balcony than I had done ever before.  I am on the third floor of this building, which is the highest, but it is actually four floors above to the ground, because that is where the ramp goes down into the underground parking lot.  Next to the down-ramp is an up-ramp going to the upper parking lot.  This creates a somewhat steep slope down that ramp, and then a sharp left turn further down the down ramp into the underground parking lot.

 

This is a relentless magnet for the numerous children who live in this complex.  When three o’clock would arrive, every Zoom taught home-schooled child would burst out of their condo and grab their skateboard, scooter, bicycle, roller skates, or any other thing that rolled and take the thrill ride down from the upper parking lot and then maneuver a total reversal in direction into the lower parking lot, whooping and hollering the whole way down.  Each child demonstrated great skill.  I never saw any one fall off or have an accident; they were like circus performers.  All ages playing together and even little kids got in on the action, their bigger brothers or sisters would take them down with them if there was any way to have them stand on top of their sibling’s feet or share a space that could be held onto.  Laughing and screaming in delight all the way up to dinner time.

 

Of course doing all that on the parking garage ramps was strictly against the complex rules, and notices to that effect would be periodically taped onto our apartment doors.  But what was going to stop it?  These garage ramps were in a different area of the complex’s office, so rarely did anybody in authority come around to this area of the large grounds of the complex.

 

You don’t think I would tell on them, would you?  First of all, I saw that they were really in very little danger.  They certainly had the skills to do what they were doing. Also, they always sounded an alert when a car was coming in or going out.  Those who saw when a car was on the move would shout out “CAR!”, which would echo loudly in the underground garage, and every child would scoot over to whatever wall was nearest.

 

And something about what they were doing reminded me of when I was in second grade in school when we lived in Boston.  It was winter, which meant that we ice skated on a nearby frozen pond and sled down a deep snow packed hill right under the school Principal’s office window.   My parents had given we a flying saucer to sled on, which was more fun in that it flew faster and spun around wildly as I sped down the long hill.  As for the Principal there of the Baker School, near the end of the school day, he would announce over the classroom’s PA system, “Boys and girls, I looked out my window and saw on the hill there is a FRESH NEW DEEP LAYER OF SNOW all ready for you to come over and do some sledding!  If you don’t have a sled, you can check one out from the P.E. department.”

 

I would have thought he would forbid sliding down the hill below his window, but instead, he facilitated it!  Maybe something in that nice man’s appreciation of children having run had rubbed off onto me for when I grew up!

 

Also, I already know from having worked in an elementary school that you can tell kids to not do something all you want, but you will NEVER stop it.  It’s like “running”.  That’s one of the most heard sounds on a school ground…teachers yelling at some kid, “No running”!  Youknow what happens…the kid stops, and then a minute later the teacher turns her head away and the kid is running again.

 

I was amused one day (back in those days) when a little boy asked me why “I let kids run.”  I said, “Because running is your normal means of locomotion.  Kids run, that is a fact.  Why should we stop it?  It’s not hurting anybody.  And anyway, if I did stop you, you would only stop for a minute and then the moment I looked away, you would carry on running again.  Adults can’t really run any more, so I think we are jealous of you guys. If we would run like you do, we would…but we can’t, so some envious people what to block you from doing it, too.”

 

Ha ha!  He gave me that “you are the only adult here who will give an honest answer” look.  I love that.

 

But this piece isn’t about what a “bad” child monitor I am, but about some other doings on the parking drive that is right there at my balcony.

 

I had begun to notice a truck periodically up against the wall in the driveway. It is was not really meant to be a place to park, but there was room enough to do so without blocking anybody driving in or out.  It was a rather nice truck and the bed of it was packed solid with stuff, some of it tools and some of it junk.  To me it looked like a combination worker’s truck and Dust Bowl flivver, piled high by a conglomeration of various disconnected items. I assumed that the truck’s owner might be some kind of worker on the complex.  We always had those, putting in new air conditioners or painting a building or trimming trees or putting in a beautiful garden, or, most frequently, a plumber, (which meant that the water would be shut off for a period time.)

 

But all those trucks had company names painted on the cab doors. This truck had no identification like that.  And he was here rather often, even more than the plumbing company.  So he was a mystery to me.  And the stuff that was in the bed of his truck didn’t give me a clue, either.  One of the items was a bicycle along with a spare tire.  I never saw a workman carrying a bicycle in their track.  This made me think that that the owner actually LIVED in this truck, and indeed, it was one of those that had four doors with a seat behind the front seat.  It was a nice truck, not some piece of jumk, so despite the aura of him living in it, it didn’t seem that a person having a truck quite that nice would need to live in it.

 

Well, with me using the balcony so much more than before, I began to see his truck a lot more…although so far nothing had shed any light on what he was doing.  I would see him come in the front gate, always following somebody who could get in via their clicker that he obviously did not have.  He would wait patiently until somebody would come in or out so that he could come in.  

 

He would park, take a swig of water from a large container in the bed of the truck, and then take down a child’s wagon, a stool, and a hoe, and put the stool and the hoe on the wagon, and then go off the property back onto the sidewalk and talk on down the street pulling his wagon!  What?  He parks here on our driveway, and the walks on down the treet to somewhere else?  What on earth does is he doing?

 

Week after week, I would see his truck carefully parked in or driveway, and most of the time he would have already gone on down the sidewalk to somewhere else.  There were some times when I went out onto the balcony around lunch time and he would have come back and was eating his lunch, sitting in the passenger side of his truck.  Other times, I would catch him arrive and watch him drink his water and then load the stool and the hoe into the wagon and walk on down the sidewalk.

 

Finally, one day, I went out to our row of five garbage dumpsters at the far end of the upper parking lot to empty my kitchen garbage can.  I saw this tall man standing on a stool against one of the dumpsters, the upper half of his skinny body deep down inside the dumpster, his skinny body bending almost in two.  I didn’t want to startle this person, so I said “Hello, how are you doing today?”  The person stood back upright to look at me and he had a hoe in his hand.  I saw it was the man with the truck!

 

He answered my question, “Well I’ve been better, but yesterday I was late and forget to pack my stool.  I had to climb up so that I rested my belly on the edge of the dumpster and as I struggled to get a bottle that was low down, I slid face right down into the dumpster!”

 

“Oh wow, were you hurt?” I said.

 

“Ah yeah,” he said, “I badly scraped by stomach on the lip of the metal dumpster edge and it really dug into me, hurt a whole lot.”

 

I said, “That was terrible, is it still hurting?”

 

“Well, not so ’s I would stop working, but it does slow me down some. I won’t make that mistake again, forgetting my stool!”

 

I said, “Well, you are very smart to have that stool, and that hoe, as well! You’re really quite organized!”

 

“Gotta have that to reach the bottles on the bottom!” he said with a little laugh.  

 

“You’ve got it all down,” I said,

 

“Yea, when I don’t fall in,” he said.  And then we both laughed.

 

I went over to the far left dumpster, tossed in my garbage, and as I started to walk away, I said, “I hope you get well soon” and he said, “Hope, so, hope so.”

 

So now I knew what he was doing.  And he must be doing this in all of the other complexes down the street. He would park here, and then go out down the sidewalk with his wagon and tools to the other complexes.  I admired his organization.

 

A month ago, our complex got a new assistant manager and I was on my balcony and the Dumpster Diver was having his lunch in his truck, parked at his usual spot on our driveway.  She was telling him that he could NOT park here, he had to park out on the street only. She was adamant, “It is ok to scavenge things out of the dumpsters, but in no way do you have permission to park your truck in here.”

 

It was as if the was thinking that the homeless were making inroads into our complex, ready to sleep on the lawn and bathe in the swimming pool. Well, I wouldn’t like that to happen either, and I do see her point.  However, the truth was that he was really a problem.

 

Sometimes he actually does park his truck out on the street, but street parking here is very hard to find.  So you know where he parks when there is no available spot on the street. This is his livelihood, after all. He just parks here like he always has. He is like the children playing on that exact same strip of concrete.  You can’t really stop it, and there is no reason to.

 

Yesterday early in the morning, I went out on my balcony to drink a cup of coffee.  I heard in the distance the sound of glass bottles clinking.  I realized it was him, but he wasn’t down by our garbage containers. Listening carefully, I could hear that it was coming from way down the end of the driveway of the condos next door to us.  They must have their line of garbage containers lined up down there more or less like where we have ours.

 

Later in the day, I went grocery shopping and when I came back home, the Dumpster Diver’s truck was this time parked on the street and he himself was standing on his stool and pulling up glass bottles with his body half bent over the metal edge of the dumpster, this time out on the sidewalk.  The line of five dumpsters had already been taken out one by one to the street by the garbage collector who drives the little vehicle that is a “truck” in the front half and a “fork lift” in the back half. This driver backs his forklift into a section of the dumpster that catches ahold onto the fork.  The diver lifts the rear up a bit and is then able to take that dumpster out to the street, where it will have its contents dumped into the top of the huge dump truck when it comes.  It’s a pretty fascinating operation (and very, very noisy!).

 

I went out to the sidewalk and said “hi” to the Dumpster Diver and asked him if he was now totally healed from his previous mishap.  He said, “Oh, yeah, I’m fine, although sometimes at night I feel sick in my stomach and even have to go to the bathroom to vomit.  But I am good, thank for asking about me.”  I said, “You bet, I hope that vomiting goes away, that sounds miserable.”

 

I was thinking how I admired him choosing to buckle down and do something like this instead of begging or in some other way to obtain money.  What he does is an ecological service on top of taking care of himself the best he can.

 

Just then, the driver of the little forklift truck came back.  It must be time for the big dump truck to come.  I hoped that Dumpster Diver had gotten all he wanted from the five bins.

 

The driver of the forklift truck very matter of actually handed the Dumpster Diver two large plastic bags filled with glass bottles.  As if it were a normal routine, which I am thinking it was, the Dumpster Diver immediately took the bags and put them into the back seat area of his truck. Somebody at another complex must have been saving these for Dumpster Diver, and the forklift truck driver had been a courier between the one saving the glass and Dumpster Diver.  This demonstrated a legitimacy in the position of the Dumpster Diver.  The landfill did not want the glass, which either would not be recycled or someone had to separate it from everything else. Dumpster Diver did want it because he could sell it, and where he sold it would transfer it all to a recycler.

 

Dumpster Diver was not, let us say, some kind of outcast dealing in garbage, down on his luck, but a valid participant in the whole process.  So you rock, Dumpster Driver!