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Gabby's Garbage
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Gabby's Garbage |
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broker6 Member
since 1999-11-07
Posts 132Bellevue, NE, Sarpy |
GABBY'S GARBAGE by Richard J. Budig "Jeez, Dick," Gabby said, "I don't know whether I should go back in there or not!!! I've taken so much out of that building it sounds like it's going to cave in on me." Gabby shook his head, thinking about the building he was dismantling for its salvageable assets. Inwardly, I shook mine, too. I shook it at the sight of him, and at another of his stories -- stories that often led to jails. Before this, his forte was asking to use the bathroom located in the back of little restaurants at closing time or late at night, slipping into the kitchen, grabbing a butcher knife, and committing armed robbery. Once after doing this, he fled into an open field at the rear of the place. Out there in the dark was a drainage ditch, and, of course, he fell in. Not knowing or caring where it went, Gabby used it for cover and made his escape into a nearby housing project. He talked a homeowner into calling a cab for him, which she did, and on his way out, they passed the restaurant which, by then, was swarming with police. But today, Gabby was telling me how he had begun stripping this old building and selling its innards. It started late one night after he "found a door open." The place was strewn with bits of loose metal which he hauled away and sold for scrap. Then, he discovered the copper wire in the walls, followed by copper and lead water pipe, door knobs, window fixtures, lead weights in the sashes, light fixtures, oak doors, and finally the lumber -- flooring and joists -- until the old place creaked and groaned its displeasure all the night long as Gabby pulled and pried apart the old building. "I mean, it's just plain scary, Dick," Gabby wailed, his toothless mouth flapping, mishevious brown eyes twinkling. Gabby was probably 35 at the time. He stood about 5'8" and weighed in at 130 pounds. He wore bib overalls (sometimes backwards) on which one leg was permanently cut off at the knee. The other was rolled to a random height, sometimes all the way down so it dragged along behind. He liked to keep his fingers wrapped with masking tape, and he wore a baseball cap with the bill cut off. Once in awhile, he wore socks. When he did, they were often different colors, or he would wear only one. Sometimes, it was fluorescent. His shoes, like his socks, were often random, eye-catching and breathtaking. Sometimes, just to be safe -- from what, I don't know -- he wore three or more turns of bailing wire around his waist, along with a belt. Or two belts. I am constantly amazed at guys like Gabby and at the sense of street-smarts and native wisdom they possess. If I had asked Gabby who was FDR, he would not have had a clue. Yet, he and FDR has something in common. They both subscribed to the same policy. The one about talking softly and carrying a big stick. "Hell, Dick, I don't say nothin' to them guys. I just carry a half a brick in my pocket. One of them winos gives me any ****, I just hit ‘im up aside the head," he smiled a toothless grin that graduated into a maniacal laugh. The fact is, Gabby wasn't a wino. I have Gabby to thank for teaching me the difference Wino's are men and woman whose lives revolve around liquor and what they are willing to do for it. Gabby, and folks like him, he said with utter seriousness and a touch of pride, are "tramps." Generally speaking, a tramp is a person who works for a living, but only when he wants to, where he wants to, and as often as he wants to . . . and sometimes late at night on someone else's premises. Occasionally a tramp will have a snort or two, but snorts are secondary. First in the life of a tramp, as it is in the life of any up and coming executive, is "getting on." That’s what Gabby was doing. He hit town with nothing but his strange bib overalls and a red backpack, which he pawned for $10 in order to get a bed at the Open Door Mission around the corner. Right from the start, Gabby had the lean, mean and hungry look you associate with a guy with a fresh MBA. "Where can I get a job?" he asked, signing the pawnslip and crumpling the ten dollar bill in his dirty, taped fingers. I told him I don't know, but they would have some ideas at the Mission around the corner. "Screw that," he barked, his wiry black hair spouting all directions from beneath his surgically altered baseball cap. "Those people don't know ****. I want a job. They want you to stand out front every morning and wait for someone to come along and offer you day work. No way, man . . . I want a job." It wasn't long before Gabby had a job with a local fruit and vegetable wholesaler loading and unloading semi trailer trucks. The nice part about it was that Gabby got to keep for himself produce that appeared too bruised to last the few days between arrival and distribution. The progression from truck unloader to entrepreneur was quick. With cost of supplies zero, his profit margin was huge. Gabby acquired a supermarket grocery cart, and he was in business, making his way each day to little markets and restaurants in the downtown area peddling fresh, but slightly bruised produce. He attached a buggy whip antenna with a red kerchief to his cart for protection from traffic, and he was off, cap askew, hair spiky, sock glowing, little brown eyes sparking, and his trailing pantleg bringing up the rear. For a time, while still reeling from the sweet smell of success -- and bruised onions -- Gabby entertained ideas of going into the wholesale produce business. It seemed so easy, and the money was so good. However, it was about this time that he found a second career possibility in scrap metal. Ever the model of efficiency, Gabby couldn't stand those "dead head" trips home each night. After peddling his produce, he was faced with a long walk home, pushing an empty cart to his room at Wino Heights, a flop-house next to my store. So, one night, he began picking up discarded soft drink cans from trash containers along his route. And, for awhile, it seemed Gabby had found his Nirvana. Produce by day, hard metal by night. The profits rolled in. Gabby worked as hard as any corporate ladder-climber. "I tell you, Dick, it's killin' me," Gabby complained, gumming a ham sandwich he'd gotten from the mission. His clothing was sticky from soda pop cans, and a bit malodorous, like leeks gone bad. "Yeah, but the money's good, isn't it?" I asked, leading him back to the reason he did what he did. Gabby smiled at me in mid-bite. It wasn't a pretty sight. "You got that right," he said over a mouthful of bread, mayo, and ham. Slowly, however, Gabby worked himself out of the produce business, largely because he had to work for someone else before he could pick up his damaged goods and make his rounds. His junk business, on the other hand, was his alone. He could work as much as he pleased. And so, like his counterparts in the corporate world, Gabby found himself working more than he liked. I got a chuckle out it. Gabby was experiencing much the same thing our Puritan founders experienced when they landed here. They wanted only to worship in their own way, and be left alone to work at simple things. Simple work and simple worship was the way to happiness. They would never have anything, they reasoned but, after all, they didn’t want anything. The trouble, of course, was that their early to bed, early to rise, keep busy so your can’t think bad thoughts ethic resulted in bulging granaries, fat livestock, and money under the mattress. Suddenly, Gabby, like the Puritans, found himself vexed with the trials of success. Gabby's forays through the dumpsters and ditches often netted him two, sometimes three . . . carts full of cans and other salvageable metals. What to do with it all? It was often more than he could carry in one cart. He tried several systems. He lashed the carts together and tied them to his waist, pushing the empty one ahead of him. He looked like a one-man version of an 18-wheeler with dual tandem trailers snaking their way among surprised citizens, who, like dogs, found their nostrils flaring, trying to determine where that smell was coming from. "But, damn it, Dick," Gabby lamented, putting new masking tape on his fingers, "when I stop, those damned carts don't. Look! The back of my legs look like a shark's been chewing on me." In addition, his carts tended to follow the contour of the terrain. If the sidewalk sloped toward the gutter, so did the carts. And convincing them to follow in perfect tow down the edge of a busy highway was absolutely impossible, not to mention how silly it looked to see three flagged carts and a guy with a one-legged pair of overalls and glowing socks towing them down the highway. It was about then that Gabby chanced to pick up and read an old TIME magazine in a dumpster in which he was resting. He burst into my store, his brown eyes fairly glowing, waving the magazine at me. "I've got it, Dick," he cried. "SATELLITES!!!" "What . . . ?" He plopped the magazine down in front of me. I wish he hadn't because it stuck to the counter. The article talked about a company that had set up several warehouses around the country rather than trying to service its customers from one central location Under Gabby's present system, he had to head for the recycling center as soon as his third cart was full of crushed cans. It was often a long walk in, and a long walk back out to "the territory." His new plan was simple. He bought several durable 50-gallon neoprene trash containers with locking lids. He chained these to steel stakes he drove into the ground. His strategically placed "satellite" system worked like a charm, except that Gabby was a bit paranoid. He wasn't the only guy in town collecting cans. "They know I'm the best, Dick," He declared, smoothing a lump of sticky stuff on his overalls. "They also know about my stash sites. Well, not all of them. But a few." Worry lines creased his pop-stained forehead. So Gabby took to sleeping with his stash. He bought a bedroll, and began sleeping with his inventory, like a squirrel sleeping with his stored nuts. He placed food in his mini-dumpsters so wherever he ended up, he could have a snack. To this day, I find it difficult to think how some of those things looked and tasted after a few days locked in a barrel with crushed soda pop cans. It was his camping out that got Gabby into the salvage business. "Hell, Dick, winter's comin' on, and it’s cold out there, and hell, there was this empty building where I had my barrel tied, so I just slipped in one night and slept on the floor. There's a sign on it that says it's condemned, so I figured nobody else would be in there." After his first night in the condemned building, dawn's early light showed Gabby a new facet of trash reclamation. There was metal everywhere in there . . . an old furnace, copper wire, pipes . . . a treasure trove, and all inside, protected from the winter's coming fury. I didn't see much of Gabby that winter. He was working nights and sleeping days. By spring, his worry lines had deepened. "God, it gets scary in there," he shuddered. I noticed that his overalls, although dirty, weren't stuck to him anymore. "And I swear, Dick, that place sounds like it's going to cave in. It's dangerous in there . . . holes in the floor . . . you know . . . " and he trailed off, while slipping a dog-eared copy of the Wall Street Journal out of his back pocket. He noticed my quizzical look. "Copper," he explained. "Have you been watching copper lately?" I shook my head again . . . from king of the road to king of copper, complete with his own dumpster-free copy of the Wall Street Journal, and all within a few months time. Spring's short days had begun to lengthen and lose their hard edge. Still, Gabby's face looked cold and haggard. It was a look whose meaning I had come to know in my years as a pawnbroker. It said time to go. There are probably some simple psychological reasons why we do what we do . . . why CEOs disappear from oak-paneled offices, and why Gabbys move on. They remind me of troops on a battlefield whose sixth sense says it's time to move just before a shell lands on them. It doesn't seem to matter whether it's a real war, or whether it's a battle by proxy, or whether the building is about to fall in on you. To me, the essence of it is that they have stripped away all that is usable and good, leaving behind an empty dream, a facade, a paper bag that looks full, but isn't. They are the takers. Of that there is no doubt. The question is, who are the providers. Is it us? 30-30 |
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PhaerieChild Senior Member
since 1999-08-30
Posts 1787Aloha, Oregon |
Broker, Every one of your stories has had me glued to my seat and waiting with great anticipation for the next one. Not only do you spin a great yarn but leave the reader with ponderings and musings as well. Very good read as usual. Poetry~ Words falling on paper, painting a dream. Shawna R. Holder Boise, Idaho |
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Dusk Treader
Moderator
Senior Member
since 1999-06-18
Posts 1187St. Paul, MN |
I have to agree with WildChild whole heartedly, your stories are excellent, and very well written, I look forward to reading each new one you post  In flames I shall not be consumed, but reborn. |
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