Garbage to You
[Goddamn -long string of expletives deleted- son of a… what the HELL where they THINKING? Argh. Just want I wanted to read on my birthday. I bet you probably don’t want to read it. You should though. Even though you’ll be in a lousy mood afterwards. Sigh. -Thomas]
Garbage to You
http://www.dallasobserver.com/issues/2005-01-13/news/schutze.html
Homeless people, like all of us, own things that can’t be replaced
1/13/05
BY JIM SCHUTZE
jimschutze@mindspring.com
All through my damn holidays, a drumbeat. She asks, “What did the homeless
people lose when the city threw their stuff into the garbage trucks?”
I don’t want to talk about it. I’m off work. I want to buy a tree. The
kid’s coming home. “I don’t know what they lost. You saw. They lost their
clothes. When the kid gets back we’ll probably find out he lost his
clothes, too.”
Not a crack of a smile. But it does buy a few hours’ peace. Then just when
I think it’s safe to walk the dogs again, my wife says, “What else did the
homeless people lose? Couldn’t you ask?”
Oh, my God. No, I couldn’t. I don’t want to talk to the homeless people.
This is the holiday season. Talking to the homeless people is
heartbreaking. I tell her the city promised to replace their stuff.
“What kind of stuff?”
This is why rum eggnog was invented. Rum, anyway. And jingle bells.
Rosemary Clooney never asked what the homeless people lost when the city
threw their stuff in garbage trucks.
We saw it together on the 10 p.m. news: On the morning of December 1–a
Wednesday after a bitter night–city crews swept down Cadiz Street through
the homeless encampment outside the city’s Day Resource Center, a block
from City Hall. Cops, sanitation workers, social workers. The sanitation
people grabbed up duffel bags, garbage bags, bulging suitcases–all of it
into the grinding maw of the garbage truck.
It did seem as if the homeless had been baited with the promise they could
sleep inside the Resource Center that night. The city reneged at the last
moment; something about complaints from neighboring businesses. The
homeless were suffered to sleep instead on the Resource Center parking lot.
At dawn while they slept the trucks came.
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