What We Discard by Gil Hoy

On Wednesdays, I take my trash down to the curb. You have to wait until 3 pm to bring it down. It gets picked up on Thursday mornings at around 8 am. Our setup is a lot like other New England towns. There’s a blue bin for recyclables, a black bin for regular trash and a brown bin for yard waste.

One of my neighbors, Ruth Ann, obsesses about Covid. Her blue bin is filled with broken down mailing boxes every week. She has been buying most of her things on Amazon for the past four or so years. Her food, her beverages, her household articles, her cleaning products. Her personal hygiene items, her clothes and most everything else. Ruth Ann rarely leaves her house these days. She and her family have lived a frugal life. She’s a lifelong penny pincher and saver and no longer has to work. 

Ruth Ann and her husband, Bill, used to like to socialize. My wife and I would often have them over for dinner and drinks. Sometimes we’d watch a movie on cable into the wee hours. Ruth Ann and Bill particularly liked comedies. They’d laugh and laugh. Their laughter was contagious. Bill passed a year ago come June. It was a fast moving cancer that did him in. He was only forty-five. Their youngest son, Chip, got COVID about four years ago. Chip was in intensive care for three weeks before he died. On a respirator for the last week. Ruth Ann’s adult son from a prior marriage drank a lot when he was in high school. He moved back in with Ruth Ann after Bill died and stays inside most of the time. He quit drinking for a while but has started drinking again. In addition to the mailing boxes, there are three or four empty bourbon bottles in their blue bin every week. You can tell a lot about a man or a woman from the contents of their trash. 

A divorcee living a few houses down from me worries about getting old. Her name is Renee. Renee’s black bin holds the week’s trash from products promising to make her gray hair brown again and remove the wrinkles from her face. She’s put on weight since her husband left her for a younger woman five years ago. She used to be a stunning head-turner. Men were always trying to get her attention. She would have none of it. She would nonchalantly view the men who stared at her, her gaze remaining soft and carefree, and then walk away. Renee was always faithful to her ex. I know that he wasn’t. I used to hear Renee softly crying from their bedroom when I would walk by her front door. These days, there are three or four empty pizza boxes in her black bin most weeks. Some leftover pepperoni and sausage. Lots of crusts but the cheese and tomato sauce are all gone.

My neighbor, Ralph, lives on the next street over. Ralph has three birch trees next to his driveway. This week, his brown bin is filled with the birch tree branches that once encroached upon his driveway. His shiny Mercedes can now get in and out again without a scratch. His brown bin is often filled with grass the yard boy cuts. Ralph’s black regular trash bin has empty pill bottles used to keep his blood pressure down. There are also frequently rags covered with car polish. Ralph  bought the Mercedes and keeps his yard carefully

manicured to impress his neighbors. A few are impressed, but most are not.

Ralph is the kind of guy who always has to do you one better. When he’s feeling insecure, or thinking that you might be better than he is, he will routinely tell you about the time he got to meet the President and the First Lady. I guess Ralph forgets that he’s already told me about it five or six times. And he forgets that I’ve told him, four or five times, that I’ve already heard all about it.  It must be hard to be Ralph. Forever rolling that boulder up a hill only to watch it roll back down again.

A house up the road has two recyclable bins that are always full. The house’s black bin never has much trash at all. Always the least on the block. The owner of the house, George, works for a company that reduces greenhouse gases and makes our water cleaner. His friends call him “Green George.” They mean it as a compliment. Green George attends political events most nights focusing on climate change. He says it’s the number one crisis confronting our generation. He says, “I’ll be damned if I’m going to let the earth be destroyed for my grandchildren and their children.” I’ll tell you something. If everyone handled their trash like Green George, our wounded planet would likely survive another million years. You can tell a lot about people from the trash that they don’t have. 

My neighbor, Davey, lives on the next street over and is an accountant. His blue bin is usually filled with shredded paper: tax schedules, financial statements, old tax returns and the like. By the time April 15 rolls around, he has three blue bins that are overflowing. I can always tell when April 15 is approaching by looking at Davey’s blue bins.

Another one of my neighbors is an attorney who doesn’t play by the rules.  We’ll call him “Mr. X.”  I’ve heard he’s changed his name a few times and no one seems to know what  name he’s using at the moment. Mr. X puts his trash out early most weeks. And then he’s fined by our town. He was arrested a while back for stealing money from his clients and had to spend a few years away from his family. He was convicted on four felony charges in federal court before he was sent off to prison. You can tell a lot about a person from how they handle their trash.

And as for me, my trash is not what it was when I dressed in a younger man’s clothes. My wife, Chloe, passed away suddenly. The kids have all grown up and moved away. I don’t talk with them or see them much anymore. 

I miss the deflated balloons from birthday parties and worn out hockey skates that used to be in my black bin. And the leaves that filled my yard waste bin when I could sometimes get the boys to rake. I even miss hearing my oldest boy Bill admonishing me that it’s “beyond weird” to be rifling through a neighbor’s trash. I miss Chloe’s empty shampoo bottles that I used to rinse out in the kitchen sink to put in my blue bin and the perfume bottles that once held her familiar smell. My black bin used to hold the empty oil paint tubes she used to paint her landscapes and seascapes that once adorned the walls of our living room. I miss Chloe’s partially filled in penciled answers to New York Times crossword puzzles that once could be found in our blue bin. And her overcooked, uneaten dinners that were sometimes in my black bin because Chloe was not a very good cook. 

On a good week, when I’m eating well and getting out now and again, my three bins may be as much as a quarter full. Those weeks are getting few and far between. Most weeks, my bins are as empty as an old man’s broken heart.  You can tell a lot about a man from the contents of his trash.

Gil Hoy

Image by Michael Schwarzenberger from Pixabay – row of different coloured rubbish bins