saltdawg

[Poll #1368676]

Marie just told me she was stalking me from North Jersey.

Poughkeepsie, you have competition...

When I was a kid, I was a dedicated garbage picker.  Every Monday morning I'd slip the bonds of the "east gate" of my yard, and go rummaging through my neighbor's garbage.  Later in life, this proved to be a vital way of making cash, as one of my neighbors seemed to be an employee of triple-A.  My friend Manny and I would plummet into this guy's garbage and sell, for a buck a piece, out-dated and garbage-stained maps of Texas and Arizona and places that no self-respecting Rhodilandah would ever find him or herself.  But we were well known in the neighborhood for being free wheeling capitalists (We had the snow-shoveling concern cornered in the neighborhood.  By FORCE) and most of our neighbors were eager to give us a buck or two for a 1973 map of Texas in 1978.  Anyway.

I was a dyed-in-the-wool trash picker LONG before Manny moved here from the Acores.  In fact, my greatest trash-picking accomplishment happened when I was around six, Seven?  I don't really remember when it happened..  I was still young enough to go to Nursery School (afternoons) and my mother made the mistake of setting me lose in the yard long before she came out to collect me to go to "school."

It may come as no big surprise that I liked to sniff gasoline tanks.  This  was only enhanced by the novelty of seventies-era cars with the gas cap underneath a spring-loaded license-plate.    So during the hour or so before nursery school, I was sniffing from gasoline tanks, and I realized that it was Garbage day.

Now, the man who lived across the street was a genuine American hero.  He lost his left leg to the yellow bastids in WWII, and hobbled around the streets with a wooden leg.  He had to lift the entire (left?) side of his body and kick his leg out with a hand in order to take even one step.  My sister and I used to mimic his gait, because we were children and didn't understand the signifigance of his disability.  Or his "cripple" as it was known then.

Anyway I had an hour to sniff gasoline and dig through garbage, and THAT morning, I went throught the andreozzi's cans, the Janetto's and then.  And THEN, I came upon this wooden leg.  Unceremoniously propped on top a tin garbage can lid.  Bent at the knee, as if it was ready to kick something off...

And OH MY GOD! What a treasure!  I remember dragging that lump of cherry or oak or hickory against my shoulder.  I hid it underneath my bed.  I'd take it out and play with it at night when I was sure nobody would find me.  Or even think to look in my room, at least.  I Kept it underneath my bed, hidden by the dust-ruffle long enough for me to become enamored with the damn thing.  It was the only toy of significants in my melange.

Meanwhile, the War Hero was strutting around the neighborhood with his nerw polymer leg,the one he didn't have to lift up with both hands to get it to move.  He even wore SHORTS on a couple of days. Showing off the GI-JOE  like kung-fu knee.

The Wooden Leg was a complex thing.  There were lots of straps, buckles and leather pads involved.  I'd bring it out almost every night and try to mimic the War Hero's limping gait, with the leg hitched up to my arm.  But it always felt hollow.  Not the leg, but the action. And at that very same time I stopped making a quarter for going to the local grocery store to pick up his order.  He was doing it by himself by that point.

Periodically, my "mother" would make sweeps of my room looking for offensive toys (guns and pornography were verbotten), garbage and assorted effluvia.  Almost a month(?) after dragging the wood and leather leg under my bed, it was discovered.

I remember crying a great deal.  It had definitely become my favorite "toy" by then. 

By sheer dint of its offensiveness, it was covered in TWO black garbage bags by my "mother" in the comfines of my room.  "Mother" declared that that thing had to be disposed of.  Right quick.  I carried the burden out to the garage on my shoulders, struggling just ahead of my mother's epithets, a seven year old christ with a leg up.  I was forced to carry the leg to the garbage in our "barn".  On sunday I was forced to drag the garbage to the curb.  Somewhere in there, I was forced to APOLOGIZE to the war hero.

I did so with tears in my eyes.  He listened with a snort: a shot of something in a brown paper sack that he kept tucked next to him in his lawn chair on his porch, where he spent idle time; and with a *snort* and a laugh: "Son" he said.  "Son, if you want that leg, it's yours.  Just put it up there in your room with your GI JOE's and shit. (another snort) I don't NEED that thing any more! (and with that he did a rockettes kick with the new, polymer leg from the V.A,)

I was still crying and scared about "stealing: his fucking LEG.  He took another pull and leaned in, real close, and said: "so I want you to HAVE that leg, christ, my own son (who was 21?) don't want it, he don't know what it means.  You don't know what it means, but at least you like it." And he ruffled my tow-head.

*snort*

"But if your MUM says it's gotta go, it's gotta go. Son."  (I was still crying.)

"Hell, I'll tell you what, the next time you find something as good as my leg in the garbage, bring it to me and I'll give you a dollar."  He said, and then took another snort on the front porch across from my childhood home.  He took another snort and laughed.

The next year or so, Manny Tavares moved into the neighborhood, and we started building bicycles and go-carks (sic) out of what we found.  We started selling out dated maps of the Grand Canyon to people who couldn't even afford colour TV on their meager paychecks from the American Tourister factory that was the lynchpin of my town.  For a buck a piece.  Out of the Garbage. (oh, the irony of building luggage for...I'm not gonna even finish it.  Y'all are smrt enough.)

The War Hero watched our garbage-picking and peddling from his porch, behind his brown paper sack, and laughed with his new polymer leg.  And then we would watch him march in the local parades without having to lift his leg up with his hands, like in the old days, before Manny Immigrated into town.  Into AMERICA.

One time Manny and I made 14 bucks shoveling snow.  During the Blizzard of '78.  I kept my seven curled inside a Queen Conch shell, until my sister found it and took all but four dollars (That was my seed money for a Murray BMX bike...)

We watched him in the local veteran's parades, not understanding that he lost his leg to a JAP mine, somewheres I haven't been able to visit yet.  We watched him as a mark for shoveling his Buick out of the snow, because with the polymer leg and everything, he still wasn't a REAL person.  And by that I mean, we knew he was an easier mark to have us do his manual labour than anyone else on Union Street.

I Had to throw away that wooden leg, but when he died.  When he FINALLY died when I was a teenager, he didn't forget.  The War Hero Left me...Left ME his NEW leg in the will.  Or so I was told.

I didn't pall-bear.  I didn't even go to the service.  I was so afraid of his last wishes.  But my town USED to be a town where everybody knew each other.  My town used to be a place where people could joke.  About morbid and taboo things. The "new" leg was buried with him, as far as I know, and the one from under my bed?  He's probably the only one who knows what happened to that Legoland Jointed leg.  I don't remember seeing it in the garbage after I returned it..

My mother professes to remember NOTHING about this story.  Except that I used to like to sniff gasoline.

ETA: 07/10/08 for clarity and grammar and spelling.

Am I gonna see pictures of the hundred buck haircut?