Ron the Yarn Spinner

 

 

                                                            

 

                                              “YOH. Let’s Talk Trash”

 

Clenched between his teeth was the stub of a Muriel Cigar. The stogie’s paper ring barely visible, struggled to stay lit under the torrent of perspiration dripping down the man’s face as he bent over to open the lower hatch. The humidity was eighty percent and the temperature hovered at ninety degrees - higher in the July afternoon sun. He was one of three sanitation workers, garbage men, we called them. (It was a matter of fact to most people I knew, not a description intended to marginalize. A used car was just that, used, and not previously owned. If you were out of work, you were unemployed, instead of non-waged.

Here is how this worked: Chicagoans would place their trash in paper grocery bags (no plastic then) open the steel door on the top of a concrete garbage container and throw the bags trash in the opening. When the box was full, they could drop a lighted sheet of newspaper onto the grocery bags and start a fire. The containers were meant to be incinerators. On garbage day, sanitation workers would flip up the access door on the back (alley side) and shovel out the unburned rash and ashes through and opening near the bottom of the box on the alley side. Some buildings had three or more concrete boxes. (Trash was not always burned.)

The cigar smoker was one of a three -man crew; two men removed refuse from the alley with heavy coal shovels. The third crew member sat behind the wheel of the orange Department of Sanitation truck; a Chicago Sun Times newspaper spread across the steering wheel. Releasing the brake, he moved the truck forward after a home was serviced to the next one, about thirty feet, the typical lot size, whenever he heard a crewmember yell, “Yoh!”

Now you might think this was an inefficient means of collecting trash – and you would be right. The concrete containers were exceedingly difficult to completely empty, and on garbage day my grandfather and his neighbors came out with booms and shovels to clean up the train of debris left behind and keep the rats at bay.

In the 1950s, Chicago politicians decided there had to be a better way and demo crews were dispatched. A few of these containers, reminiscent of WW II pill boxes, escaped the swing of sledgehammers and are still around. (Photos) What replaced them? (Drum roll please) An empty fifty-five-gallon oil drum.

Did all of this make the garbage man’s lot any easier? Not really. The drums were heavy. I can still see the trash collectors (two at a time) “waltzing” these oil drums full of trash over to the back of the back of a garbage truck, lifting them onto the sill and rolling them left and then right to remove the contents. The inevitable “bam” came like a cannon shot when the drum rolled off. Each drum had a lid, and most drums were personalized with your address – sometimes with a name. No, not yours. The name of your alderman.

You see, the drums were not free. You had to buy them, and this did not sit well with Chicago residents, a.k.a. voters. A call to your ward boss would usually get you a free one, but he would expect to see you at the polls on election day. Sometimes, as a subtle reminder, you would find the name of your alderman stenciled on the drum, Ward Committeeman, Ed Kelly, a political “heavy” who once controlled an army of five thousand patronage workers (Your job was subject to the political fortunes of your benefactor) handed out turquoise barrels emblazoned with the words “Kelly Cans” in Chicago’s Ravenswood neighborhood.

Image courtesy of the Hi and Lois cartoon (Mort Walker& Dik Browne)

The Hi and Lois cartoon shows a humorous side to trash collectors’ work, but it is a hard and dangerous job. The men deal with heavy and dangerous equipment daily, and according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the fatal injury rate for waste collectors is thirty-three per 100,000—ahead of police officers, construction workers, and even miners. Notice the grab handle and riding step in the image below? Well, when the trash collectors were not walking behind the garbage truck, they got to ride – on the outside, standing precariously on the riding step and holding onto the grab rail.

 

Mike Rowe (Dirty Jobs) would rightfully champion the work of these trash collectors, providing an essential service to all of us. Plumbers say they protect the health of the nation. So do these men.

As a kid, watching the garbage men labor was a living tutorial. It taught me the importance of getting a good education. I learned another lesson as well: compassion when my grandmother came up to me with two ice cold glasses of water.

Proszę dać im wodę  (Polish)

Give the water to them please.

She did this often.

Years later when I found it too challenging to mow my own lawn, I hired a landscaping service and each time the workers came to the house, my wife and I provided cool bottled water – and a snack. I liked to place these in a paper grocery bag that I saved just for this purpose.

 Plastic carts started to replace the 55-gallon drums during Mayor Harold Washington’s administration in 1985, and a champion of the program was 47^th Ward Alderman Gene Schulter. Schulter, extremely popular, and a notoriously efficient manager, convincingly argued this program saved money. “Only one sanitation worker was needed to attach the cart to a motorized arm that dumped trash into the truck.” This then brought an end to ward bosses soliciting favor by handing out drums and eliminated the irksome Kelly Cans that dotted the alleys in Schulter’s ward. There was no love lost between the two political rivals.

 “There’s nothing as crucial to an alderman as garbage.” Longtime Chicago Ald. Roman Pucinski.