Garbage Man Opens a Can of Social Worms

Garbage is a more complex product than I thought. It has social implications that go beyond the Supreme Court’s recent opinion permitting policemen to pry into it for clues to our behavior.

Louis Lasco confesses that he and his wife found themselves in a game of one-upmanship with a neighbor over the quality of their garbage. Garbage, they discovered, could be a status symbol.

It began when Lasco’s wife noticed that their neighbors had dropped two empty Gallo champagne bottles in plain sight on top of their garbage. She regarded this as a flaunting of their superior life style.

I would never have thought of an empty Gallo bottle as a status symbol; however, Lasco overcompensated by seeking out two empty Dom Perignon magnums and placing them on top of their garbage, thus restoring his wife’s self-esteem.

Next day the neighbors struck back, conspicuously throwing out a worn copy of Horney’s “Psychoanalysis and Human Growth” on top of a cracked Caruso record. Lasco retaliated with a biography of Freud and two unplayable Chaliapin records. His wife was appeased.

Obviously there can be no end to this sort of rivalry, and Lasco soon withdrew from the field. He wonders, though, whether there might be some future in garbage items sold merely to establish class.

Carol Nahin’s experience has both social and moral implications. Some years ago, she says, she and her husband had to clean out a rental whose tenants were moving out. What they found were hundreds of pornographic books and magazines whose titles are too obscene to print.

They did what anyone would probably do. They put the printed matter in dozens of cardboard boxes, camouflaged their contents with a cover of newspapers, and put them out on the curb for the trash pickup.

First, she said, a little old man came by with a white dog. He looked into one of the boxes. He came to the door and asked permission to take a few books. Nahin’s husband said “Sure.” An hour later another old man came to the door and the scene was repeated.

The next day six more men and two women helped themselves to stacks of the books and magazines, first asking permission as the first man had done. At the end of the day the first man returned with a small red toy wagon and asked if he could have the remainder. They said yes, and he took the lot.

Nahin concludes that “one man’s trash may well be another man’s treasure. I believe those books and magazines probably added years to that old gentleman’s life. At least I hope so.”

John Babcock, executive producer and editorial director, KABC-TV news department, has a problem with garbage that seems extremely simple but that defies solution. He can’t get rid of a battered old garbage can.

“The bottom is torn out, but the collectors won’t take it away. I tried putting it inside another can; it didn’t work. I then put it out alone with a note on it, saying, ‘Take me, I’m broken,’ but they took the note off and left the can.”

Babcock says if it were plastic he could cut it into shreds and dispose of it in another can. But he has nothing to cut the metal can with. He says he doesn’t know his trashmen’s schedule, so he can’t appeal to them personally.

“I just figured that you were about the only source I knew of who had the creative kind of audience which has also had this kind of problem and found a way to deal with it.”

It is true that I hear from many intellectuals and creative people, but I’m not sure Hancock’s problem is exactly their meat. If nothing else works, I suggest that he dig a hole and bury the can.

Disposing of our waste is becoming more of a problem every day, like traffic congestion, drugs and gang warfare. Notice the sofas and carpeting tossed out on the freeway shoulders. It has been suggested that we shoot our trash into space, but that would simply spoil space even before the death of our planet forces us to take refuge in it.

I’ll make Hancock a deal. I’ll take his old garbage can if he’ll take our defunct Servel refrigerator. Try to get rid of one of those .