"Private Landfill" Removed From My Block (Mostly)

(Photo for illustration only, from Flickr.com, little girl at a garbage dump in Phnom Penh, Cambodia) (I will have some of my own photos later but--minus the little girl--this is pretty much what the yard looked like)

Incredible progress on the block! A motivated city crew of more than half a dozen workers showed up to clean out the "private landfill" in the yard and utility buildings of 416 30th Ave. N....

I caught buses from St. Paul early to pick up my car at Highland Tire, looking forward to having transportation again...and, like I said in that other posting, a car makes a good weapon if you gotta use it that way.

Checking out the situation on my block, I found a city crew with two garbage trucks, some smaller utility trucks...good lord, a "Sanitation Special Forces" A-Team had descended upon 416 30th Ave. N., the electricity-thieving house, the one I've started calling "the problem child of the block." A guy from the gas company showed up at the same time, and told me the gas was now CUT OFF, for real.

The back yard had been used as a dump for years...after they ran out of space in the garage and the other small utility building, I guess, or did they just run out of motivation to walk all the way to the garage? I snapped some pictures of the crew, who posed. I told them it was for my blog.

Realizing I had--be still my foolish heart!--a sanitation crew with two trucks, I asked the supervisor if I could bag up the clothing from the back porch of 415 31st Ave. N. (previously pictured) and toss it in the truck, too.

"Only if you promise to put us on your blog!" he laughed. (Oh, sir, you're going on the blog...just give me a little while for film developing!)

I tried to be helpful by pointing out the wire hooked to the back line was live, and they shouldn't monkey around with it. Furthermore, I was almost certain a young man was climbing in the second story window each night, and he might even be in there now.

So they started cleaning out the mounds of refuse...and I managed to get about a dozen small white trash bags of rain-sodden clothing off the back porch of "415 31st," discovering a perfectly good pair of pliers in the process. (One corner of the mound of clothing smelled like urine...I was glad for my gloves)

So I got the whole porch cleaned, though there was still litter laying around, but I thought it might be good to concentrate on some of the more spectacular trash in the neighborhood instead of the more ordinary bottles and cans. So while the garbage truck was there, I managed to get rid of a bunch of stuff in the yard directly across from my house, on "Peter And Joy's Block," including the remains of a smashed toilet, (most of it) an old television, three gigantic sodden telephone books on the front steps, a wooden window frame with jagged glass, and--just as the truck was about to leave--an entire shovel-full of busted glass from the sidewalk, using a shovel from the crew, with their permission.

I was both glad and sad to see the trucks leave...glad because I had an excuse to stop dashing around picking up garbage, which is real (expletive) work, but sad because...well, it was so great getting stuff hauled off, such a productive day on the block. I saw Peter and Joy's kids for the first time, across the street as I dashed back and forth with loaded-up bags. I yelled to Joy to let her know what was going on as she shuttled her kids into a mini-van.

They not only hauled off garbage, but some stuff it made me sad to see hauled off...they tossed the children's bicycles into a truck for "metal," along with the basketball hoop from the back yard. That stuff was still halfway useful, and I hope it gets snatched from the load somewhere down the line, sold off as a useful item, instead of shipped to China as scrap metal to help support an even further trade deficit.

I went back to see what the yard looked like...it was all hard-packed dirt, no grass, because so much of the lawn had either been covered with garbage or used as play area for numerous children. I vowed to buy some flower seed, and later in the day I spent about 12 bucks on perennial flower seed. (Perennials give you the most "bang for your buck," if you can really use that phrase with flowers)

The rather large garage still had approximately 1.5 feet of refuse covering the floor, but what was the crew supposed to do? They probably couldn't get the garage door open, and they couldn't very well shovel (expletive) in the dark, like souls in Purgatory. It would have been better to clean the landfill out of the garage, but the whole house is probably full of garbage, too, so where to start and where to stop?

I saw a black cat with a white bib in the yard...it looked just like Scot's kitty, Mister. I hope Mister isn't lost and running around the neighborhood.