High noon, high temperatures and high humidity had come together to put me in something of a foul mood. My last stop on a morning packed too full of errands was the recycling center on East Stevens Street. I hoped to be the only one there so I wouldn’t have to wait in line.
I didn’t have much to drop off. A Chewy box that held several toilet paper tubes and a couple of empty cartons of the lime-flavored frozen fruit bars that have become my guilty summer pleasure. I also had a tote filled with junk mail, magazines and catalogs—but not newspapers, which I take to the animal shelter—and a tote filled with disposable plastic containers that had held strawberries and disposable plastic containers that had held blueberries and disposable plastic containers that had held yogurt. All clean and dry, as required. That tote also held a few empty and crumpled “bubble water” cans.
I parked beside the dumpsters designated for cardboard and wondered, as I always do, why the ground was littered with a whole lot of stuff that didn’t belong there. Garbage, for instance. I’ve also seen rusty bicycles. Old clothes. Filthy mattresses. I suppose leaving those items at a recycle center is better than tossing them out on the side of the road. But why not just go ahead take them to one of the county waste collection centers?
Anyway, after I dumped my cardboard I noticed a large, older model car backed up next to the other containers. A young woman stood in front of the plastics bin, stirring around inside it with a long stick. It was clear she hadn’t seen me. I set my tote full of paper on the ground, coughed loudly and said “Hello! How are you today?”
Surprised, the young woman turned to look at me.
“I just need to dump these papers,” I told her, “and I didn’t want to startle you.”
Her face lit up. “Thank you,” she said, and began stirring again. “I was so busy raking I didn’t know you were there.”
“Raking?” I asked.
“Yes.” She pulled the stick out of the dumpster to show me the plastic leaf rake on the end of it. “Sometimes people accidentally throw aluminum cans into the plastics container. I’m trying to fish them out. I fish them out of the can container, too. I don’t think it’s against the law.”
“I can’t imagine it is,” I told her. “Anyway, I’m not the law.”
She pointed to the open trunk of her car, which was practically overflowing with trash bags full of cans. “When I get enough, I sell them,” she said. “I do this because I don’t have a real job because I take care of my granny who has terrible dementia. If I got a job she’d have to go to a nursing home and that would just break my heart so I collect cans to make a little money. I don’t think it’s against the law.”
Again, I shook my head no. I asked if she visited all the recycling centers. She said yes, and that she picked up cans on the side of the road, too, whenever she could get someone to stay with her granny. “She’s too far gone in the head to be left alone,” she said.
“I have a few cans in my car,” I told her. “I’d be happy for you to have them.”
Her face lit up just like before. “That’s so sweet!”
So I pulled out the seven bubble water cans that were in the tote that held my plastics and, feeling sad that there weren’t more, added them to her stash. “My best to your granny,” I said. “She’s lucky to have you.”
My new friend touched my arm and smiled. And the foul mood that had threatened to consume me on that hot, humid, high noon magically disappeared.
(July 19, 2025)
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