a Chicago searcha Chicago c Chicago nsearchtsearchd Ccwerecommend b Chicago h Ccwerecommend s Chicago dsearchpsearcht Ccwerecommend e Ccwerecommend lnsearch searchssearchao Chicago t a Chicago i Chicago gsearchdo Chicago n Chicago a Ccwerecommend tsearcho Chicago h Ccwerecommend n Ccwerecommend r Chicago dsearchasearchd Ccwerecommend i Ccwerecommend t psearchu Ccwerecommend dsearchb Ccwerecommend d Ccwerecommend u nsearch searchp Chicago l Ccwerecommend i Ccwerecommend gresearcht Ccwerecommend a Ccwerecommend n Ccwerecommend ssearch( Ccwerecommend asearchdsearchuf)searchndtsearche Ccwerecommend trnporti Ccwerecommend g Chicago t Chicago e t Chicago a Chicago ssearchfesearch la Chicago e Ccwerecommend searchhesearchssearcharesearch Chicago esearch oher Chicago pr Chicago o Chicago alsearchsosearchis Ccwerecommend n Ccwerecommend t Ccwerecommend b Ccwerecommend a Ccwerecommend tisearchg Ccwerecommend osearch h Ccwerecommend searcha Ccwerecommend grssearchbt Chicago imsearchlsearch Ccwerecommend hsearchring Ccwerecommend thsearchmsearch B Ccwerecommend Ccwerecommend hsearch t Chicago me se Ccwerecommend wa Chicago dn Chicago searchisearchh her lecture I was in awe of her, not because she is female, but because of what she and every one of her fellow deputies face every time they report to work. You see in addition to being a department training instructor, a patrol deputy, a bomb specialist, she is also a parent and a spouse.

I coupled this to the previous two hours of the evening where one of the deputy bailiffs for the court system provided us with insight of their duties. First, I learned his job is protecting the judge, the jury, the legal teams, and all the other innocents in the courtroom. He mentioned something we commoners seldom take into consideration and this is in every court decision there is someone not happy with the verdict. Be it the defendant, defendants family, victims, victims family, or the general public (RE: Anthony trial). I always pictured Bailiffs to be like BULL in the old TV series Night Court as a stand around kind of guy. Not true, the Bailiff has the responsibility for the safety of everyone in the courtroom meaning he/she has no time to enjoy the proceedings but must be ever vigilant for that one person who has a score to settle and choses this venue to do so.

These are not the only two persons who have impressed me over the couple weeks of training and the couple of years I have been volunteering. In fact, I have not met one member of the department who I would not consider as a professional. But this training period has exposed me to a bunch of their stories of police adventures and I dont think many of us would like to take these chances on a daily or routine basis. Their stories and my inside exposure, as shallow as it may be, have caused me to understand just how dangerous their jobs are and how positive and confident they are in taking on their duties.

Now here is the real kicker, these people do this for an average of $42K a year and except for a very recent cash bonus allowed by the county commissioners, they do their jobs at the level they do, with the pride they exhibit, and have been doing so while not having a normal pay raise for the past three years. Remarkable people working for a remarkable outfit!

OCTOBER 27, 2011 COLLECTORS E. L. THOMAS

Today I will dedicate space for those who are not only necessary but are in actuality heroes in every sense of the word. I am talking about the individuals who collectively form one of the largest standing armies in humankind. They are our loyal, steadfast and contributing TRASH COLLECTORS. Without them it would be like living in a world before flush toilets.

Before I pay tribute to the breed of today I have to go back to my childhood in northern Ohio. In our little town we had one truck and for a lot of years one collector. His name was HAP and although we never boasted of the fact he was also a second cousin to our clan. Not talking about this relationship was necessary because for reasons unknown to me now, but there must have been one when I was young, Garbage Men were very low on the social totem pole. I mean we ourselves were close to where the grass grows but to see Haps position on that pole we had to look down.

I dont mean to stereotype garbage men of yesteryear but describing Hap will serve as therapy to me at this stage of my life for the way I (we) thought of him back then. He was a short guy, maybe five feet tall and he always wore the same grey toned coveralls that served as the uniform of his profession. Hap was always wearing yesterdays growth of facial hair that seemed to always be the same length and if you think of the razors of that era I simply dont know how he was able to maintain this look for the twenty years I was aware of his existence. He had a pair of gloves that had the gauntlets, I guess to keep the garbage from going up his sleeves and his most defining symbol was his cigar. I would estimate this thing was about two and a half inches long and I would guess all of that in girth. This cigar was fixed on the extreme right side of his mouth distorting his face, think Emmett Kelly. I probably encountered Hap a few thousand times while growing, as well as did everyone else in town. Never, not one time, was that cigar lit. I dont know if it was ever replaced, if it came out during sleeping hours, or even moved, and I can only imagine the soggy mess that was on the inside. Hap looked the same if he was carrying a trash can, out coon hunting, or sitting in the Chatterbox having a draft and pork sandwich.

Back then Hap would come to the back of the house carrying a large can and would dump the galvanized garbage can everyone had back then into his larger can. You must understand we didnt have plastic bags to toss our garbage into so if the stuff was messy it was wrapped in yesterdays Akron Beacon Journal. If it was wet and towards the bottom of the can, these wrappings had disintegrated and the mass down there was not particularly pleasant, especially in the summer when the flies used this can for breeding purposes and those little white grubs were swarming over their gourmet. None of this seemed to bother Hap in the least. He was there every Monday morning and took away our leftovers. In fact during every day of every week of the year he also took away the leftovers of everyone in town. Eventually, we had to lug our deposits to the curb as the town grew and this one man operation could no longer come to the back of every house for this duty. As growth continued a second collector was hired and Hap was now promoted to primary driver and only occasionally hopped out of the cab to assist with the loading.

Since Hap liked, no loved and lived for, coon hunting and my father, Haps true second cousin, shared the same passion (coon hunting-not collecting-although he did manage to drag home a lot of trash we stored in various piles around the homestead) they were a pair during season. Sometimes I would go with them and found out during these adventures Hap knew just about everything about everybody in town. Had Hap been dishonest he probably could have retired a young man but it never occurred to him to use his collected knowledge for personal gain. As it was, Hap boasted of the largest collection of dirty pictures and books in the county and all of this collection he had come into second hand. He knew who drank what and how much, who was on what medicine, and who owed what and how much they had in the bank. He knew who was getting letters from people they could not openly talk to their spouse about. While he didnt sell this information he gave a lot away freely.

Hap must have been the healthiest person on the planet as he never missed a collection day and no one ever said anything bad about his work ethic. Saying bad things about Hap was another chapter. His efforts, while never acknowledged, were probably the most valuable contribution to our community there has ever been. Somewhere in the great beyond there is a spirit with a cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth and he is undoubtedly providing these same services throughout eternity. CIP* Hap! (*Collect In Peace).

This foreword, as I stated, was necessary for me to single out just one of the demeaned, unrecognized, and underappreciated soldiers of this huge worldwide confederation. I cannot, in this article at least, pay homage to every one of them so I will limit my praise to just those who services my curb. I live in Florida and for some reason, heat and growing seasons I guess, we have trash pickup twice a week, recyclables once a week, and yard trimmings once a week. This means, depending on the schedule, we have as many as four times a week we must lug our unwanted byproducts to the curb. And I thought it was overbearing when as a kid I had to do this once a week.

Having upwards to four collections means we have a continuous parade of those big green trucks prowling the neighborhood almost daily. Our neighborhood must be the very start of the route because they are morning people which means the entire neighborhood is also morning people. Lets start with the recyclable collectors. They are not allowed to start before six thirty in the morning. Our guy has this trick of being outside our house at six thirty and three seconds. This is after he has been through phase I and well into phase II of the development. This means your cans and plastic and paper better be there or you get to accumulate them for another week. This should not be a problem but because of the economy you cant put them out the evening before because there is another society who visits your buckets before Waste Management and they are collecting aluminum and probably stuff about your identity you dont want to share. Besides, this society doesnt clean up after picking through your buckets. Back to our designated can collector, there is a distinctive sound when he empties the tub of cans, bottles, and other noise makers into the proper bin of his truck. This is much more efficient than a church bell or alarm clock. And dont for a moment think the tub of papers and magazines do not generate noise. They do. Lots of it!

Next we have the weekly yard trash collections. I am not talking simply grass trimmings. Since this is the tropics we have palm trees. Beautiful to look at if properly trimmed but they never are except the day they do get trimmed. You see by tomorrow they are overgrown and shaggy again. So, trimming my four (used to be seven but I slipped while trimming three of them and they ended up at the curb) palm trees is a perpetual event. Add to this, a hundred and twenty feet of hedge, and by myself I keep this weekly collector in work. This collection is usually later in the morning on the designated day unless you forgot to put it out the night before then it is very early. I am happy to announce our nonregistered citizens do not come around the night before to pick through the yard trash. So depending on my attention to detail dictates how early they approach my little patch of greenery.

And last but not least, are the guys who pick up the trash-trash twice a week. I use the term guys because I have not seen a lady trash collector-ever. Anyway, their schedule is predicated on how long you intend to sleep. If you want to sleep late they are early. If you get up early you may not see them until afternoon. I have not been able to crack this code. I think the pentagon needs to consult with them and how they have this honed to perfection.

There are two things these people are experts at other than collection. First is Compaction Clatter. The trucks they use have the most heinous mechanical apparatus ever devised to squash what they collect in the form of trash into a seeping wad. Not only does it sound like a train wreck happening inside your head it also leaks goo that seems not to dry on the street surface for days or even weeks. I mean this slime smoothie is not pleasant and is not something a high pressure hose can disrupt. For some reason my address is one of the ones where this compaction must take place every time, even if it had just occurred at my neighbors.