Text  The Trashman
　　Saturday,April 7
　　Steve and I hauled trash for four solid hours without a break of any sort,
　　except for about five mintes when we stopped to talk.
　　We got eight hours of pay for cleaning up
　　our route no matter how little time it took.
　　My shoulder hurt badly each time I put another full barrel on it,
　　and my legs occasionally shook as I started out to the street.
　　But all the rest of me said,"Go,trashman,go."
　　I could not have guessed that there would be joy in this.
　　Dump.Lift.Walk.Lift.Walk.The hours went by quickly.
　　Saturday meant that most adults were at home on the route.
　　So were school-age children.
　　I thought this might mean more talk back and forth as I made the rounds today.
　　There were many people outdoors,working in their gardens.
　　Most of them looked friendly enough.
　　While I wouldn't have time to talk at length,
　　there was time to exchange the greetings that go with civilized ways.
　　That is where I got my shock.
　　I said hello in quite a few yards before the message sank
　　in that this wasn't the thing to do.
　　Occasionally,I got a straight man-to-man or woman-to-man reply
　　from someone who looked me in the eye,smiled,and asked either
　　"How are you?or"Isn't this a nice day?"
　　I felt human then.But most often the response was either nothing at all,
　　or a look of surprise that I had spoken and used familiar words,
　　or a friendly hello.
　　Both men and women stared at me and said nothing.
　　A woman in a housecoat was startled as I came around the corner of her house.
　　At the sound of my greeting,
　　she gathered her housecoat tightly about her and moved quickly indoors.
　　I heard the lock click.
　　Another woman had a strange,large animal in her yard.
　　I asked her what kind of dog it was.She gaped at me.
　　I thought she was hard of hearing and asked my question louder.
　　She seemed a little frightened before she turned coldly away.
　　The nice response came from women alone.
　　From the way they replied and asked after my health,
　　I knew that at the day's end when they listed the nice things they had done,
　　there would be a place on the list for"I spoke to the trashman today.
　　Steve spoke spontaneously about these things on the long ride to the dump.
　　The way most people look at you,you'd think a trashman was a monster.
　　Say hello and they stare at you in surprise.They don't know we're human.
　　"One lady had put ashes from the fire in her trashcan.
　　I said we couldn't take them.She said,
　　'Who are you to say what goes?You're nothing but a trashman.'
　　I told her,'Listen,lady,I've got an I.Q.of 137,
　　and I graduated near the top of my high school class.
　　I do this for the money,not because it's the only work I can do.'
　　"I want to tell them,'Look,I am as clean as you are,'
　　but it wouldn't help.I don't tell anyone I'm a trashman.
　　I say I'm a truck driver.
　　My family knows,but my in-laws don't.
　　If someone comes right out and asks.
　　'Do you drive for a trash company?'I say yes.
　　I believe we're doing a service that people need,
　　like being a police officer or fire fighter.
　　I'm not ashamed of it,but I don't go around boasting about it either.
　　"A friend of my wife yelled at her kid one day
　　when they were running out to meet a trash truck.
　　'Stay away from those trashmen.They're dirty.'
　　I was angry with her.'They're as good as we are,'I told her.
　　'You seem to have a lot of sympathy for them,'she said.
　　'Yes,I do.'But I never told her why."
　　Our truck was packed full before noon.

　　We drove to the dump,were back on the route by 1:00,
　　and had finished for the day by 2:00.
　　I had planned to stay at this job for only two days.
　　But now I'm going to stay.The exercise is great.
　　The lifting gets easier with every load,even if my left shoulder stays sore.
　　I become faster and neater as time goes by.
　　I'm outdoors in clean air.
　　And,contrary to what people think,I don't get dirty on the job.
　　I have made up my mind,too,to go on saying hello in back-yards.
　　It doesn't do any harm,and it still feels right.
　　Frankly,I'm proud.
　　I'm doing an essential task,"like a police officer or a fire fighter."
　　I left this country a little cleaner than I found it this morning.
　　Not many people can say that tonight.
　　John Gardener has said that a society which praises its philosophers
　　and looks down on its plumbers is in for trouble.
　　"Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water,"he warns.
　　He might have gone a step further and called for respect for both our economists
　　and our trashmen;
　　otherwise they'll both leave trash behind.