When I was a kid, we didn’t have garbage collection.\u00a0 Like everyone else in our corner of rural New Jersey, we had an open-top 55-gallon drum in our backyard into which we put the garbage, and once a week, Dad would light it up.\u00a0 Bear in mind, this was just 40 miles outside of Manhattan.\u00a0 Things were different in the 1950s.\u00a0 Sometime in the 1960s, though, New Jersey outlawed burning your own trash and we started having to pay for garbage collection.\u00a0 I’m sure Tony Soprano’s forebears figured into that transition somehow, but it was what it was.<\/p>\n
Fast forward another 50+ years, and I was lucky enough to be blessed with my first grandson.\u00a0 It is fun watching him grow and observing the phases kids today pass through.\u00a0 One of the most interesting ones has been his fascination with garbage trucks and the guys who man them. For that reason, when I read a brief review in The Wall Street Journal\u00a0<\/em>on Trash!<\/a>, I had to order a copy.\u00a0 It’s an easy but fascinating read, and I read it in a day.\u00a0 The author, Simon Par\u00e9-Poupart, writes quoteworthy paragraphs throughout.\u00a0 The most poignant one, which exactly describes the phase my grandson passed through, hit me on Page 36:<\/p>\n When kids see the garbageman, sometimes even their garbageman, they fall in love.\u00a0 He’s their idol.\u00a0 They’re so impressed by the truck that they worship the man who seems to tame its force, unafraid of its growling engine and its iron maw.\u00a0 Children are entranced by the garbagemen in the same way we have always admired heroic lumberjacks like Paul Bunyan in the United States or Jos Montferrand in Canada, strongmen from Heracles to Louis Cyr, the fearless log drivers that once plied our rivers…Kids just can’t get enough of us.\u00a0 They’re the only ones who can look beyond the dirt and the smell to love us.<\/em><\/p>\n Par\u00e9-Poupart is a well-educated garbage collector, and despite his credentials and by personal choice, he stayed on the lowest rung of the trash collector hierarchy.\u00a0 He was one of the guys who ran behind the truck and hefted the bags and cans into the hopper.\u00a0 The writing is so good that you could almost feel yourself there.\u00a0 His central premise is that being a trash collector completely eliminates and of the anxieties most folks would ordinarily feel.\u00a0 You’re already at the lowest position you could possibly occupy in society.\u00a0 \u00a0There’s no going any lower.\u00a0 And, being a trash collector is tremendously strenuous, and as such, it provided all the endorphins and the natural rush that accompanies other athletic endeavors.<\/p>\n Par\u00e9-Poupart wrote quite a bit about the disdain of the communities trash collectors serve, and the reasons why such disdain is misplaced.\u00a0 It made for interesting reading.<\/p>\n Par\u00e9-Poupart wrote about the enormous amount of waste modern societies generate, and that the world cannot continue to generate trash at its current rate.\u00a0 I believe there’s a lot of truth in that.\u00a0 When I was a Cal Poly Pomona faculty member, we taught that same concept in the engineering curriculum.\u00a0 It’s interesting:\u00a0 Par\u00e9-Poupart occupied what he and many others might regard as one of society’s lowest rungs, and faculty members in an engineering college occupy what many might consider one of society’s highest (i.e., an engineering professor), yet both espouse the same thoughts on waste generation (an issue not generally recognized by society).<\/p>\n Back to my grandson’s fascination with garbage trucks and garbage collectors:\u00a0 My son-in-law discovered that there are numerous YouTube videos on that very topic.\u00a0 My grandson, my son-in-law, and I found them mesmerizing.\u00a0 Here’s an example:<\/p>\n