In The Mouse's House

IN The Mouse’s House WL 2006

I was blessed to spend the first twenty years of my life working alongside and with my father. He was a commercial waste hauler. He taught me how to work. He taught me how to treat other people. He taught me honesty. Most importantly without teaching me he was one thing a lot of my friends did not have growing up. He was there for me. In the 1950's and 60's my brother Jim and I worked with dad before and after school. As youngsters we often found ourselves pared with hired help. Brother John was a bit younger and smaller. He compounded that by being quiet and shy. This was something he eventually grew out of, This is in no way a put down of John by any means. He went on to be the absolute best all around athlete in the family as well as garnering outstanding academic accomplishments at the U of Minnesota. As a result of his size and age dad never required him to work on a regular basis like Jim and I and later David whose work ethic and dedication or desire to contribute in a positive manner came by choice. David’s work ethic in the family is legend.

There were times however when dad would send John along to help in an effort to instill a work ethic in him, also to simply help out a bit. On a Saturday morning dad sent John along with me on a trash route. I'd only held my drivers license for a year or so. John must have been nine or ten years old. During the school year on weekends dad would send us out on a route that a hired person had been working. Most help he hired in those days were good men who gave him an honest day's work for the pay they received. There were also those who constantly cheated. They belonged to the special group always looking for ways to exploit and or take advantage of someone else's generosity and common decency.

On this terribly hot Saturday morning with John along we were forced to clean up one of these routes. After the first several stops I realized we were in for a long day not so much because of all the extra trash but the time and effort in cleaning it up at almost every store we stopped at. It was fairly easy to tell when some of the refuse was old and obviously more in volume then the place normally had. It was hard for us to understand because whenever dad hired someone he didn't just give them the keys and send them out with a truck. He always took them with him for a week or so. He not only checked their driving and how they treated the truck, he showed them just as he'd shown us how he wanted the job done. When he left one of those trash bins behind a supermarket you could hold a picnic in there. He kept a broom at most of them and always had a shovel on the truck and when he finished he swept the place up to the point you could practically eat in there. The fact that there was a door on there and it was kept closed resulting in absolutely no one being able to see in there was of no consequence to him. He gave them all a first class treatment. He was hired to clean them up and that's just what he did. He expected us and anyone he hired to do the same. It just did not always work out like that. He actually demanded it from us so if the weekend came around and a hired driver left a bunch of trash on the floor from the past day or week before we had to clean it up. This was required weather he, the driver was with us or not. It wasn't easy most of the time. Especially behind super markets because of the unusual mix of corrugated boxes, wooden and wire bound crates along with smashed up bottles, bags, fruits and vegetables. All this trash mixed at times made a shovel almost useless, and, these guys were walking all over it sometimes for several days. It was very hard and time consuming to clean up.

It was a Saturday afternoon Brother John and I arrived at the rear of a local supermarket that I knew to have heavy sales on Friday evenings. I expected the bin to be overflowing but I certainly was not expecting the sight that awaited us at the rear of the store. “Wow!” boxes and trash overflowed out of the bin and clear out to the alley. There would be no early finish for us. Joking, I told John to cancel his plans for the night. Heck, I was the one who would be canceling plans for the evening. We put a whole load on the truck and made a trip to the city dump and we hadn't worked our way inside the bin yet.

Once we returned we dug in again. After a short time we worked our way inside the door and cleared a portion of the debris onto the truck. I was astounded to see that the tremendous amount of refuse and debris. It was quite easy to see someone had gotten away without cleaning this place up for a long time. There seemed to be everything you can imagine in the form of comerical waste covering the floor of the bin. As we worked it became evident that most of it had become soaked from rain. It was soggy and stank to high heaven. We had to load the big stuff off the top and then deal with a mess on the floor. This place was a challenge. I was going to be a long time pulling out what I could by hand and then trying to shovel what remained. It was terribly hot and I instructed john to stand back out of the way. I did not want him to get hit with a piece of flying glass or something as I attempted to shovel stuff onto the truck. This went a little faster but it was heavy and tiring

After a period of time I'd worked my way in pretty good and I stopped to rest for a minute. Young John stepped up and said ”let me try some.” I told him “it's hot and it's pretty heavy and messy also.” He still wanted to try so I gave him the shovel and stepped around to the side of the truck out of the way in order to rest a bit.

John threw a few shovels full on to the truck. They weren't very big ones but I figured whatever he did would be a help. So, I'd rest a minute and let him have at it. All of a sudden I heard his blood curdling scream come from inside the bin. I couldn't get there quick enough. All the while my mind was filled with thoughts of trying to explain to my father how I let John get his hand cut off or something. He’d stepped on a rusty nail or something of the like. On and On. I jumped through the opening of the bin expecting to see John a mass of blood or at the least in terrible pain. Nope! There stood John, shovel in hand and frozen in time. He was stone still. Looked like a museum piece.

He was staring straight ahead and down. I turned to look to see just what was in his line of vision that could have terrorized him so. At the other end of that line of sight staring back at my little brother was one of the largest rats I'd ever seen. He or she as it turned out looked even more menacing there as it was all reared up on its hind legs with teeth exposed and was actually making a bit of a hissing or snarling noise. It also looked as if it would spring at any second. Wow! I did a double take. At the same time I jumped in front of John, grabbing the shovel on the way by. The rat sprang and I swung simultaneously. I don't know where John disappeared to. I do know that I hardly had time to get the shovel back around before the big rat sprang again, and I hit it again and again. Still it attempted to get at me, all the time making the ugliest noises. Noises, matched only by the sounds coming from John somewhere outside of the bin. It finally stayed down though and I left the bin a bit shocked.

Now I had to go find John. Wherever he was I figured he was probably traumatized for life. ”John” I called out. “The rat is dead. Come back Please!” John soon appeared from somewhere and I put him in the cab of the truck asking him to wait there while I finished up. quite a bit later I was about to load the last of the remaining trash. I went to get John. It took some effort but I finally coaxed him out of the truck in order to show him just why we'd had such a hard time earlier with that huge rat. Back down under the bottom of the refuse pile was a nest with five or six little baby rats in it. Some of them with eyes not yet opened unable to see. We had disturbed and invaded the hiding place of a mother and her little ones. She was simply trying to protect them.#

Eudell Watts lll.