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September 18, 2006
Recycling
Over the summer of my last (I think) year of High School I had a semi job/volunteer position with the local recycling station near the post office in Kemblesville Township, Pennsylvania. On one of the long, brutally hot days, when patrons would make a run for it between the air conditioned interior of their cars, the trunk, and the recycling bin, I would stand in the parking lot, directing everyone and making sure that the number four plastics did not go in the number two container-- one of a series of big, turtle looking bins made from PVC with sliding windows in the front. Number one plastics, as I remember, were laundry detergent bottles, number two's I'm not sure about. I think number 3's were the Coke and Pepsi bottles. I could be wrong but each of these containers was filled with a distinct type of bottle, very pretty when you looked at it but awfully smelly, particularly in the heat.
At about one:30 in the afternoon in the middle of a normal broiling day, Joe Farber rode up on his bike. I was speaking with one of the recyclers at the time and when I turned around Joe was over near the turtle bins, opening each sliding deposit window, one after the other and looking in before shutting them. By the time I said “Hey…” he was in the number 3 bin, rolling around in the 2 and 3 liter Coke and Pepsi bottles. Given the heat inside the bins and the miasma of heavy syrupy odor that they exuded he stayed in the number 3 bin for a long time. Maybe five or six minutes. At least one recycler dashed form her car, carried stuff to the number 2 bin, paused, turned around, threw her recycling back in the trunk and drove off-- presumably in search of a different recycling station. The clatter on the outside was considerable. Even the glass dumpers stopped at the glass dumpster to see what was going on.
After five minutes or so, Joe climbed back out of the bin and stood in front of me. "You know JB, that was one of the most disgusting things I've ever done...I'm covered in backwash." He then got on his bike and rode off. It was like being visited by the Christmas reindeer of Kemblesville weirdness. We never mentioned this again. I think we both understood that it was a small event 'in itself.' that did not need to be discussed. I'm not sure what Joe thought about it. To this day, I'm not entirely sure what I've thought of it, except that I’ve always wanted to go and swim in the recycling container (and who wouldn’t) and while I have not gone for a swim myself, it's great to know someone who has.
(6:46)
In a completely unrelated incident, I managed to give myself a concussion on that same day a summer earlier, at a horse farm in a different township, when I bent down to get a drink from a regular, attached-to-the-barn garden hose only to look over, in slow motion, and watch the water spill on to an electric fence a foot away from my face. The electrical impulse was, of course, invisible, but my memory has permanently inscribed a faint white spark that glimmered as it traveled upstream to grab me in the molars
(6:54)
Jibber Jabberin | By jb | 06:46 AM