On the brighter side of people...

Last weekend I was home in DC. Hold on one second, I just have to soak in how weird it is that "home" is Washington, DC.

Ok, I'm over it.

So anyway, I was home, and Amber heard about this local River Cleanup event and we decided to go.

Backstory: Amber used to work for the Farallones Marine Sanctuary Association in San Francisco. She helped design their visitor center, and organized events, which taught people about the stretch of ocean from the Golden Gate Bridge out to the Farallon Islands. They also took people to visit Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary, which is an amazing underwater sea mount. While working there, Amber used to help organize beach cleanup events. Twenty or thirty people would show up, put on gloves and grab a garbage bag. It was a feel-good awareness event where everyone would walk along the beach to pick up a bag or so worth of trash. It was mostly bottles, cans, and cigarette butts.

What I mean to say, is that we were totally unprepared for what we were about to witness at this river cleanup in DC.

The organizers fed us bagels and juice, and then they handed out work gloves and garbage bags, then we got a little pep-talk from the mayor, pretty normal fare. Then we walked over the ridge to the river, and oh my god!

This wasn't exactly a bottles-and-cans trash pile. There were washers, dryers, refrigerators, entire cars which had to be chopped up by an advance crew, tires, tires, and more tires, lots of rotten lumber, jagged unidentifiable rusty metal thing-a-ma-jigs. Let me just tell you right now that there were over a hundred volunteers, probably closer to two hundred. We spent over four hours pulling stuff out of the river, the bushes, and the dirt. All told we hauled out over seventeen tons of trash including over two hundred tires! Basically, this river had become a community dump.*

Amber and I milled around in shocked disbelief for about ten minutes before our organizational instincts kicked in. Without consciously deciding to, we split up and each started building work crews around us. The organizers had two pickup trucks, but were only running one.
I asked, "Hey, what's up with that second truck?"
They said, "Do you know how to drive a stick?"
I said "Hell yeah! Where are the keys?"

Amber helped assemble a crew down by the river, building piles and loading them into the truck. I got a guy to walk ahead of me hollaring "Truck coming!" to clear the ant-trail of human trash removers, and then I enlisted a few guys who stayed up by the road—at the growing trash pile—to help me unload the truck. Being a sub-organizer was awesome!

(I feel like I'm filling out a resume to be on the work crew during Megan's revolution.)

Honestly, it was a really amazing experience. Folks were there from all walks of life. There were a lot of kids, mostly in roving sub-packs wearing matching T-shirts. I didn't look too closely, maybe school or church groups, but whatever, they were working their butts off. One crew of eight boys, I'd guess about 12 years old, had this whole "fridge patrol" thing going on. They kept pullling them out and hustling them up the hill. I wondered if I should give them a break and let them load a fridge onto the truck, but as I drove by with a full load I heard one say, "Should we use the truck for this?" But another didn't hesitate a moment before saying, "We don't need that truck! We got it!"

Let me also say, I can't believe nobody got seriously hurt! The local fire department's off-duty firemen were onsite cleaning up and standing by in case of injuries. (Who doesn't love fire men-and-women? Just leave right now!) But everyone was super careful. I was even proud of the young fridge-patrol. I saw them start to lose a fridge, but they all just put it down, and then checked on each other "I'm ok. Are you ok? Are all of you guys ok? Alright, let's pick it back up." I think the universe, in a show of rare compassion, looked over all of us that day, because, seriously, people's heads could have been chopped off by some of that metal which was getting tossed around. Maybe it was just so dangerous, that all the danger cancelled itself out. I don't know.

Anyway, another faction was the community-service-hours types. These guys weren't too hard to spot either. They were young, strong, not very interested in actually doing any work, and absolutely dumbfounded as to what all these nerds were doing working their asses off for free. I don't think they were lazy, so much as they just couldn't figure out how to get onboard. Where did they fit in here? There were a few of those guys that were good workers though, and I think they realized what a sweet gig this was, as far as working off community service hours goes. One of them became my main point of contact back at the pile. I think he respected me because of the truck, but I think he worked hard because he saw that he was useful and necessary to the process. (Isn't that all any of us wants?) He got into it, which pulled in a few more tuff-types.

At the end of the day, I went up to him and pulled off my gloves to shake his hand. "Hey, seriously, you were a big help today, you kicked ass." He stared to shake my hand, but then reached around and hugged me.

I wish every day of work was that satisfying!


*Let me add a few things, before anyone looks down on this neighborhood, like I wanted to at first glance. When a person with money retires their appliances, they usually go to someone like a college student. When a college student moves, they sometimes leave appliances out in such a way as a poorer person picks them up. Folks in a poor neighborhood don't just throw away useable appliances. They are the ones who use those things until they are truly dead. Until even duct tape and bailing wire won't save them. Society should want these appliances to get used to death. Yes there is obviously a problem here, nobody wants cars and dishwashers in the river. The question is, how to help extract those dead appliances from those neighborhoods, not how to hassle or arrest people trying to get rid of them. Hell, you didn't want your old washer once you could get/afford a bigger, nicer, quieter one. The only difference is that someone else was happy to take your old one since it still worked.

Another reason not to smoke.

One night—while working in Houston—a bunch of us went out for dinner. This one guy didn't come along—he stayed at the hotel and ate dinner from his grocery stash. He's a smoker, so after dinner he walked a few doors down to the CVS to get a pack of smokes. (CVS is the Long's Drug Store of the East, and apparently of Texas too.) He's a nice guy, a little quiet, keeps to himself at first but is real funny once he gets going.

Anyway, he didn't have any cash, and was hoping to use a check to get cigarettes and a few other things. (The hotel we were staying at doesn't give you any shampoo, and not quite enough soap.) But the guy behind the counter says, "Not if the check is from out of town." Crap, he's from out of state. So he says, "I'll go get some money and I'll be right back."

The bank, with an ATM, is down a few more doors. So he gets some cash. He's just about to go back into the CVS when four cop cars scream up, surround him, and the cops throw him on the hood with the shoving and the yelling and the "shut the fuck up" and the handcuffs... the whole deal.

This guy is totally terrified, but keeps saying to himself, "It'll be ok, they'll let me go, it's ok, this is a mixup, it'll all work out." Finally, this undercover cop walks out of the CVS in plain clothes but with a badge/pin on his chest. He walks right up to our guy sprawled on the hood of the car, and leans forward to look him in the face. Thankfully, the undercover cop, without hesitation said, "Yeah, that's him."

Wait a second. What? I mean, what?!?!

Now it's time for "You have the right to remain silent," and we're gonna shove you in the back seat of the car, and "You just sit there and shut the fuck up."

One of the windows is down a little bit, and he can hear the radio chatter, which includes, "Suspect is armed, repeat, suspect is armed." Now he's somewhere between a nightmare and 1984, or a nightmare about 1984.

All he can think about now is the fact that he's going to jail, for something bad involving a gun, in Texas.

Well he sits in the back seat for almost a half hour before a cop gets into the driver's seat and they start driving. He doesn't know Texas at all, so he doesn't know where he's going. They drive him around for about 15 minutes before he realizes they are pulling back up to the CVS. The cop gets out and opens the back door. "Now listen son, they took a look at the security video of the parking lot, and they say that the guy who committed the armed robbery in front of the CVS wasn't you. I hope you understand that we have to take certain precautions." Somehow I think they are legally required not to apologize in situations like this. I'm serious, it must be like how you're not supposed to apologize after a car accident even if it's your fault, or why governments never apologize for their screw ups even if they just killed a bunch of civilians, god forbid everyone starts apologizing for their mistakes, we wouldn't need lawyers anymore or something. Someone explain this one to me?

Anyway, our guy holds out his hands, "Can we do this without the handcuffs?" Admittedly a pretty ballsy comment for a young liberal, to a Texas cop, when he's just happier than shit that he isn't going to the Texas big-house tonight. They uncuff him, the cop cars drive straight away, and he's left alone in the parking lot thinking, "Oh my god! There's still an armed robber around here somewhere!"
Ultimately, thank god for the surveillance camera! Holy cow! I mean where was the victim? How long would it have taken to arrange a lineup back at the station if they hauled him all the way down there?

The story is that someone got robbed in the parking lot. They ran into the CVS, and told the manager it was a medium build white guy with a knit cap. The manager calls the cops. An off duty, or undercover, or whatever, cop is in the CVS, he says, "I saw that guy, he was just in here." The real robber makes a clean getaway, and our man gets nabbed, positively ID'd by a cop as "the guy who was just in the store."


A desperate need for cigarettes outweighs fear of armed robbery, so our friend goes back into the CVS to, finally, get a pack of smokes. Well, as soon as he goes in the door, the folks behind the counter see him and turn white. One woman actually dives under the counter! Our guy starts going, "Oh my god, wait, no, seriously, it wasn't me, they just let me go." Luckily the manager and the undercover cop are still chatting in the back of the store. They hear the commotion and come up and save him. "No, it's ok, it was a mistake, this isn't the guy," and the manager gives him a free pack of cigarettes.

I think he should have turned them down in exchange for a pack of gum. Man, that was your chance to quit smoking, then and there.

The Houston Rodeo.

So, yeah, I'm back in Houston. It still sort of sucks, but that's not what this entry is about. This entry is about the big Texas rodeo in Houston... I went to it!

I wore a flannel shirt and my hat, but with my ear rings and my Chuck Taylors, I think I stood out a bit as a non-Texan.

Anyway, it was held in the Astrodome, and we saw John Fogerty perform. Man, that guy knows how to write a classic rock song. Every song was such a huge hit:
"Rollin', rollin', rollin' on the river!"
"I see the bad moon risin'! I see trouble on the way!"
"Born on the bayou. Born on the baaaaayyyyou!"
Pretty damn fun.

The real punch line to this story though, is that a guy at work—a real Gool 'ol Boy Texan, who is really funny and friendly in a crotchety kind of way—had the tickets but couldn't go, so he gave them away. A few of us went, and the next day I said "Hey Feral," (His name is Feral. Well, maybe it's "Ferrell," or, well, his name is probably something normal, like Richard, but he goes by Feral. Like the pigs, I guess.) So I say, "Hey Feral, that was a really fun show, thanks for the tickets!" And he says, "Ok, well now you can take you're dang 'ol West Coast... East Coast... whatever-ass back home, and y'all can tell yer friends that you been to a real Texas rodeo, man!"

And that is exactly what this entry is for!