The Great Garbage Can Stand-Off
About a week ago we suffered a severe windstorm that took our beloved brown plastic garbage can from us. That can came with the house when we purchased it back in 2002 and had served us loyally ever since. It's a fine can made out of that tough kind of plastic or rubber that withstands the hardest throws of the NYC sanitation crew not to mention numerous collisions with our cars as we back into our driveway.
During the middle of the week we had another windstorm that led to the depositing of a green garbage can with wheels on it (but no lid) right in front of our house. I noticed it when I left for work in the morning but figured its owner would pick it up. When I returned in the evening I saw that a car had knocked it over onto the sidewalk in front of our house. Well, I figured, the wind giveth and the wind taketh away. I dragged the can down our driveway to the spot where our old brown can had silently sat lo these past five plus years. It was a nice can, reminds me of one of the funnier birthday gifts I ever bought for someone.
Back when I lived at home, it was my job to put out the trash. My folks had the old. old heavy steel trash cans. After I moved out, my dad realized what a pain it was to drag them to the curb. So, when I was pestering him one year to find out what he wanted for his birthday, he said "A garbage can with wheels".
"You're serious" I said.
"Yep." Was the reply. My father was a man of few words, perhaps due to his fondness for old Westerns with silent strangers or perhaps due to the fact that he had a wife and five children who most certainly were not reticent.
So that's what I got him. A sky blue garbage can with wheels made out of the finest Rubbermaid material. He was delighted. It was the most useful thing anyone had got him in years. Well, little did I know that he wasn't the only one who felt that way about wheeled garbage cans.
About a day after I wheeled our new receptacle down the driveway something appeared at the edge of the driveway across the street. A round, UPS-brown familiar something.
Could it be?
At first I thought it was just a coincidence. Garbage day came and went, and still the round brown something stood stoically at the corner of their driveway like a royal guardsman. As my wife and I came and went from the curling club over the weekend we noticed it still there. "Is that ours?" I asked her. She wasn't sure. I figured if the people over there were leaving it out because it was ours, why wouldn't they just walk it over and leave it in my driveway?
And then I made the connection. This was no simple case of mistaken ownership. It was an offering for a prisoner exchange.
As we left to go to the curling club for the annual season-ending pig roast on Saturday I took a close look at our new green wheely friend in the driveway. There were numbers and our street name written in black Sharpie on the side of the can. I looked up and across the street to confirm what I already knew: the address was that of the neighbor who took our Brownie from us.
Obviously, they thought that whoever owned the can that they had acquired via gale had stolen their own can in retribution but they didn't know who it was. They were making a peace offering, an exchange of prisoners, no questions asked.
I looked across again. I couldn't do this in broad daylight. Maybe I would make the trade under cover of darkness. Yeah, that was it. Unfortunately when we arrived home at 4am I forgot to make the switch. Sunday dawned a steel gray with the can impasse still in place. I waited eagerly for sundown.
My first attempt to switch on Sunday was foiled by the presence of other neighbors outside, arriving home from who knows where. Sometime after 9pm I ventured out again. The coast was clear. Moving quickly and stealthily much like Bluto Blutarsky breaking into the Dean's office with a horse I scurried across the street green wheely can in hand held high - I dared not roll it lest the noise familiar to its rightful owner rouse him from his dwelling to engage me. I could just imagine the riveting conversation.
"Hey, where'd you get our garbage can?"
"Uh, found it on the sidewalk in front of our house. Where'd you get MY garbage can?"
"Your garbage can? I don't see your address on it."
I should mention at this point that our trash cans still bear the address of where the prior owner of the house lived before moving into the house we now occupied. At least I assume that's the significance of what's written on the cans. It'd be a hell of a windstorm to carry the cans over from Brooklyn.
Anyway, the dialog never took place thanks to my incredible skill at suburban covert operations. Like a CIA operative on a dead drop I switched the cans in a single motion and dashed across the avenue into the safe shadows of my own driveway. I put Old Brownie back in its rightful place next to the rectangular blue can that is our backup trash holder.
Like MacArthur in the Phillipines, I strode proudly back into my living room. Mission accomplished. Mission accomplished indeed.
During the middle of the week we had another windstorm that led to the depositing of a green garbage can with wheels on it (but no lid) right in front of our house. I noticed it when I left for work in the morning but figured its owner would pick it up. When I returned in the evening I saw that a car had knocked it over onto the sidewalk in front of our house. Well, I figured, the wind giveth and the wind taketh away. I dragged the can down our driveway to the spot where our old brown can had silently sat lo these past five plus years. It was a nice can, reminds me of one of the funnier birthday gifts I ever bought for someone.
Back when I lived at home, it was my job to put out the trash. My folks had the old. old heavy steel trash cans. After I moved out, my dad realized what a pain it was to drag them to the curb. So, when I was pestering him one year to find out what he wanted for his birthday, he said "A garbage can with wheels".
"You're serious" I said.
"Yep." Was the reply. My father was a man of few words, perhaps due to his fondness for old Westerns with silent strangers or perhaps due to the fact that he had a wife and five children who most certainly were not reticent.
So that's what I got him. A sky blue garbage can with wheels made out of the finest Rubbermaid material. He was delighted. It was the most useful thing anyone had got him in years. Well, little did I know that he wasn't the only one who felt that way about wheeled garbage cans.
About a day after I wheeled our new receptacle down the driveway something appeared at the edge of the driveway across the street. A round, UPS-brown familiar something.
Could it be?
At first I thought it was just a coincidence. Garbage day came and went, and still the round brown something stood stoically at the corner of their driveway like a royal guardsman. As my wife and I came and went from the curling club over the weekend we noticed it still there. "Is that ours?" I asked her. She wasn't sure. I figured if the people over there were leaving it out because it was ours, why wouldn't they just walk it over and leave it in my driveway?
And then I made the connection. This was no simple case of mistaken ownership. It was an offering for a prisoner exchange.
As we left to go to the curling club for the annual season-ending pig roast on Saturday I took a close look at our new green wheely friend in the driveway. There were numbers and our street name written in black Sharpie on the side of the can. I looked up and across the street to confirm what I already knew: the address was that of the neighbor who took our Brownie from us.
Obviously, they thought that whoever owned the can that they had acquired via gale had stolen their own can in retribution but they didn't know who it was. They were making a peace offering, an exchange of prisoners, no questions asked.
I looked across again. I couldn't do this in broad daylight. Maybe I would make the trade under cover of darkness. Yeah, that was it. Unfortunately when we arrived home at 4am I forgot to make the switch. Sunday dawned a steel gray with the can impasse still in place. I waited eagerly for sundown.
My first attempt to switch on Sunday was foiled by the presence of other neighbors outside, arriving home from who knows where. Sometime after 9pm I ventured out again. The coast was clear. Moving quickly and stealthily much like Bluto Blutarsky breaking into the Dean's office with a horse I scurried across the street green wheely can in hand held high - I dared not roll it lest the noise familiar to its rightful owner rouse him from his dwelling to engage me. I could just imagine the riveting conversation.
"Hey, where'd you get our garbage can?"
"Uh, found it on the sidewalk in front of our house. Where'd you get MY garbage can?"
"Your garbage can? I don't see your address on it."
I should mention at this point that our trash cans still bear the address of where the prior owner of the house lived before moving into the house we now occupied. At least I assume that's the significance of what's written on the cans. It'd be a hell of a windstorm to carry the cans over from Brooklyn.
Anyway, the dialog never took place thanks to my incredible skill at suburban covert operations. Like a CIA operative on a dead drop I switched the cans in a single motion and dashed across the avenue into the safe shadows of my own driveway. I put Old Brownie back in its rightful place next to the rectangular blue can that is our backup trash holder.
Like MacArthur in the Phillipines, I strode proudly back into my living room. Mission accomplished. Mission accomplished indeed.
Comments
I remember those garbage cans at Nanny's and Poppy's house, I believe Mom might have pilfered one actually. I have to ask her because I remember having one when we lived here as well.
Although I probably could cobble together a good garbage dump story from when I was a kid....