Jay Cronley: New trash system's first day is garbage
BY JAY CRONLEY World Staff Columnist
Sunday, July 08, 2012
7/08/12 at 4:37 AM
It's high noon on the first showdown day of the new trash system, and garbage is everywhere. It's like walking by the stretch of road where the club Bada Bing was in Jersey.
In my neighborhood, tidy families of three and four had, as a group project, dragged huge bags of garbage to the curb.
Holes have been poked or bitten in regular garbage bags.
Bugs are having a field day.
The best of times: Here's the way it used to work. Junk-heap garbage trucks came down my street before or just after sunrise. The haulers picked up everything that wasn't tied down. For a reasonable tip, they might haul from the curb the curb itself. But this system was working far too well. Complaints were unheard of.
When something is working too well, it's as though the city doesn't want its citizenry to expect tremendous service from all aspects of local government: Can't have somebody expecting the street department to function as well as the garbage department.
So now we have a new system that starts in October and has taken into consideration everything but three months during which somebody driving something will come once a week to pick up who knows what, hopefully everything.
The worst of times: Most people put out their garbage the night before.
Talk about wishful thinking.
During a morning walk through the garbage fields on the first day of the new regime, my male dog started to lift a leg on a large bag. Something in the bag seemed to move, sending my dog leaping backwards. So now we walk in the street.
A woman a block over stood at the curb, peering south, when we walked past.
Remember the scene in "The Music Man" where the kid with the lisp stood at the curb and sang about how excited he was because the Wells Fargo wagon was coming and was going to bring him a new trombone? This scene was a little like that. Only we're hopeful for a garbage-wagon sighting.
The woman had been working in her garden and thought she had heard the beautiful sounds of bugs and rodents and cans and scraps being scooped up and relocated. But it was wishful thinking.
Looking forward: The ones who say they have had once-a-week trash service for years and have survived quite nicely must eat like hummingbirds and shop in miniature.
The thought here after watching about the 15th dog lift a leg on my garbage bags - there's a nice odor over coffee - is, let's have an election tomorrow.
Original Print Headline: New trash system's first day is garbage
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