What Was So Special About Your Favorite Summer?

I found a dead opossum in the yard this morning. It was a youngster and I’m saddened, as my dog may have had a paw in its death.

Opossum are occasional visitors to our yard and the dogs go berserk but hadn’t harmed one before. Typically, the opossum play dead and the dogs lose interest, but last night, Ollie the Aussie stayed out in the yard longer than usual. He wasn’t barking but I should have known something was wrong; I didn’t notice the visitor when I went outside to investigate.

Oddly, it reminded me of one of my summer jobs during college, working for my city’s Maintenance Department, or “the garage” as we called it.

There were good days and bad days working at the garage, but all the days were hot, sweaty, and smelly. You’d start each day in clean clothes and come home grimy and stinking to high heaven.

Good News

The good days involved getting drunk. The college kids were paired with lifers—the guys who did this work as full-time jobs—and assigned a task: chopping down an endless field of weeds with a scythe, shoveling dirt from the gutter of all the roads in the city, or mowing one of the infinite supply of lawns maintained by the city.

Some of the lifers would get thirsty in the afternoon, and would scheme some way to get beer. Then we’d find a shady place to drink with ample line of sight to see if the supervisor was checking up on us.

The garbage truck—nicknamed “the packer” by those who loved it—was one of the better assignments. Sure, it was hard labor dealing with the most putrid trash of the 80s. Back then, the policy was if it could be dragged to the curb, we’d throw it in the packer. I swear, if you had the bone saws to cut up a body, and put it in the trash can, we’d dump it and move on to the next house. Eyes on the skull still open? We shut the eyelids and turn it face down beneath a bag of asbestos tiles torn out of the basement.

The great thing about the garbage truck was the breeze in your face as you clung to the back of the truck while driving to the next street. Sometimes the lifer behind the wheel would try to shake us loose, flooring it around corners then slamming on the brakes. It’s a great test of grip strength to hold on to the handle with cotton gloves soaked in garbage juice while pulling three Gs turning from Biddulph Road to Summer Lane.

We’d hustle from house to house like Paul Newmann in Cool Hand Luke, trying to complete our route as soon as possible. If we finished early, we’d swing by a party store for beer, then hide the truck behind one of the churches and drink until it was time to clock out.

Bad News

The worst moments happened while on street cleaning detail and you came upon road kill. Maybe it was the dread because you could see it up ahead while shoveling dirt out of the gutter.

The lifer, acting as a “field supervisor,” was driving the truck and didn’t have to shovel. So you knew you were going to scrape that poor, dead critter off the road.

I didn’t like dealing with dead animals which only made it worse. It would have been simplest to just grab it with my hands; instead, I tried to scoop it with the shovel, usually rolling it over and farther down the road. Then the lifer would yell at me for being a wuss (but with more colorful pejorative terms), until I finally figured it out.

“Don’t forget the entrails,” would be his one note, meant to improve my work.

One day we came upon a roadkill skunk. It hadn’t simply been crushed in the road but had been squirted inside out. Obviously, the musk glands had been fully expressed, and it all stank like the worst mustard fart of all time direct in the face.

It was a $2.10 an hour job, and remains my most memorable.

Back in My Yard…

I’ve mentioned I try to make my yard welcoming for critters, using the fence to keep them out and safe from the dogs’ area. But a bunny burrowed under the fencing just last week. Somehow, earlier this summer, a snapping turtle from the subdivision pond wound up in the dog yard (I used my catcher’s mitt to return it to safer pasture), and now the opossum.

I like to think there’s a way for all the creatures to get along. Obviously, there are untenable situations. I’m just saying we should try a little harder to make it work for as many creatures as possible.

Basically, I brake for squirrels in the road, so be ready if you’re behind me.