Here are few not-too-onerous PWB rules
- Do not “Troll” the Pootie Peeps Diaries. If you don’t like animal diaries, there’s no need to tell us about it. Just go find some other diary more to your liking.
- Whatever happens in the outer blog STAYS in the outer blog. This is a place to relax and play; please treat it accordingly.
- If you would like a pic from the comment threads, please ask the poster. He/she may have a copyright to those pics. Many thanks!
- There are some pics we never post: snakes, creepy crawlies, any and all photos that depict or encourage human cruelty toward animals. These are considered “out of bounds” and will not be tolerated.
- If you’re not sure about an issue...please ask. Someone is always glad to help.
Previous Neighborhood Stories
Jack’s Pet
Larsson Helps Out
The Golden Goose
The Diet Contest
A Halloween Story
The Great Bird Feeder War
We Gather Together
The Birds
Unwelcome Guests
The Fruit Collector
Farley and the UFO
A Fish Mystery
Every year Clyde wants to put Christmas lights on the recycling cart. Every year Jen talks him out of it. He says it’s in honor of the brave city guys who spare him all that trash hauling, and Jen says, “Yes, but the guys have to be able to get to the cart, and they can’t if you put stuff all over it. And if they can’t, you, Clyde, will personally make a trip to the dump, because I will not have my house stuffed full of beer cans and back issues of the Reader’s Digest, whether or not you’ve actually read them.”
Clyde says of course, he’s read the beer cans, but he gives in every time. He just leaves a bottle of Johnny Walker by the cart in a brown bag for the guys to have a little holiday cheer. That is, he did until that night in 2011 when the bottle froze and cracked open.
It all started long before the city started putting the carts in all the yards. Jen had decided that doing their part in the nation-wide cleanup might mean more than just re-using the plastic bread bags, so one day she loaded the trunk of the car with cans, jars, and newspapers and handed Clyde the keys. “You can take the stuff to the recycling yard in Wauwatosa,” she said. She handed Clyde the directions she’d written out.
“You’re not supposed to use that yard if you don’t live in Tosa,” Clyde said.
“How is anybody gonna know where you live?” Jen said. Clyde would have liked to say something about IDs, but Jen had checked it out, and she knew there was just a parking lot and a row of umpty-yard dumpsters and no gate, let alone any official type person interrogating people about their municipal origins. “Go on,” she said. “When you’ve done this a few times, you’ll be used to passing as an ethnic Tosan. Just don’t wear that Brewers cap turned backwards again.”
Clyde had tried that just once, and even he’d thought the cap looked dorky with the bill pointed straight back, so he’d tried turning it a little and tipping it away from his forehead, but he’d forgotten
how spacious his forehead was getting. Jen had warned him that if the kids ever laughed that hard again they’d hurt themselves permanently and then he’d have to feel guilty the rest of his natural life unless he was lucky and got senile. Clyde put the cap on dad-wise and went off to pose as a suburbanite.
Things went smoothly for a few weeks. He even got a little fun out of it. There was a little crash each time he tossed a jar into the dumpster labeled for clear glass and that somehow really tickled him.
The problem came when Jen decided to have a little bridge party for some of what she called the “girls.” They came over on a Saturday, lunched on mystery salad, and went through two whole three-liter bottles of wine cooler. Irene had forgotten the prizes, but after a while no one was keeping score. “How could you put away that much of that stuff?” said Clyde.
“It’s just like soda,” Jen said. “Nobody got really lit up.”
“That’s the point,” said Clyde. “Why drink if you’re not gonna regret it the next day? Besides,” he said, how do bottles like those look in a house in a brew town?”
“Huh,” Jen said.” I happen to know that you once bought some of that stuff that’s imported from Colorado. And anyway, the bottles can go in a bag for recycling and then no one will see them.
They’re rinsed already, so you might as well pack up all the stuff and go.”
“That was an impulse buy,” said Clyde, “and it happened exactly once.” He decided it was too warm for any kind of cap, so he just grabbed his keys.
“Wait,” Jen said. “I’m going with you. There’s a lot of glass this time, and I want to try tossing it.”
“Huh?” said Clyde.
“You said it was fun,” Jen said.
“OK,” Clyde said.
When they got to the dump, Jen stationed herself next to the glass dumpster and started tossing while Clyde went to tend to the other stuff.
After Clyde had dumped the cans, he realized that the wine-cooler bottles weren’t in the trunk of the car. He was sure Jen had put them there. Oh, nuts, he thought, what if they were in the same bag with the cans? There was a kind of ladder thing on the end of the can dumpster, so he climbed up and looked. Sure enough, there were two big plastic bottles on top of the cans. “Oh, bleep,” Clyde said. Then he remembered that Jen was probably out of earshot and he got more sincere. He pronounced at length because he was picturing being seen and winning a nice fine and being ordered never to cross the city boundary again, which would have been a hardship because Ray’s beer depot was in Tosa too. He figured he’d have to retrieve those bottles and put them in the right dumpster.
Clyde looked around. Jen was the only other person in the yard, and she was still tossing glass and grinning. She would toss a piece of glass, wait a moment to enjoy the sound, and then toss another piece. She’s having too much fun to notice me, he thought.
One of the bottles was right under his nose and it didn’t seem too far away to snag so he leaned over. He grabbed the bottle but he’d forgotten that the bottle was wider than his hand and he
grabbed too hard. The bottle popped out of his hand and landed three feet farther away. “Oh, bleep again,” he said and then he lost his balance.
Jen always flattened the cans and Clyde pretty much disapproved of people who didn’t but on this one occasion he was glad a lot of people were lazy. Flattened cans would have been noticeably less pleasant to land on. As it was, he was kind of floating on top of the pile. The bottle he’d been reaching for was right next to his left hand. “Thanks a lot,” he said to it and threw it up and out of the dumpster. He threw it as hard as he could and the next thing he knew he was up to his waist in the cans. “Oh double bleep,” he said. The other bottle was too far away to reach, but Clyde just looked at it. “The bleep with you,” he said. “How the bleep do I get out of here?” For some reason, he didn’t want to yell for Jen right away.
Maybe I can kind of swim to the side, he thought. Isn’t there some kind of hand hold somewhere? He started sweeping cans aside with both arms. Then he was in up to his chest. The other plastic bottle was a little closer now but Clyde figured he’d be up to his neck if he tried to throw it out of the dumpster. Then he heard Jen calling him.
“Clyde, where are you?” she was saying.
Clyde gulped, squeezed his eyes shut, and called back. “I’m in the can dumpster,” he said. He didn’t exactly yell.
Where? said Jen.
“In the can dumpster,” Clyde said. This time he yelled. He yelled the way he would have liked to yell that time when the dentist jabbed that bad tooth.
“Oh, cripes,” said Jen. Then she was on the outside ladder and looking over the side of the dumpster. “What happened?” she said.
“The wine cooler bottles got mixed in with the cans,” Clyde said. “I tried to get ‘em out. No wine cooler in my house ever again,” he said.
“Oh, OK,” Jen said. Then she said, “What a hoot though. Oh, sorry.” She managed to straighten her face out almost completely.
“Do we have a rope or something in the car?” Clyde said.
“I think that really big bungee cord is still in there,” Jen said.
Clyde gulped again. “Can you get it?” he said. Jen disappeared down the ladder. It took her about three days to find that bungee cord. Then she was back, looking over the side of the dumpster again.
“OK, here we go,” she said. She hooked one end of the bungee cord over the edge of the dumpster and tossed the rest of the cord toward Clyde. “Can you reach?” she said. He could, just barely.
“Careful of that hook on the end,” Jen said. Clyde was. He got a grip on the cord and then put his other hand above it and got a grip there. He tried some hand over hand, but the cord was doing what bungee cords do. He wasn’t getting any closer to the side of the dumpster. “Pull on the cord,” he said to Jen. “OK, she said, but remember you’re pretty heavy.” Clyde could see she was pulling hard, and she was trying some hand over hand too, but the cord was still stretching. It has to go as far as it can some time, he thought. Doesn’t it? Then the cord slipped out of his hands, snapped up high and sailed over Jen’s head. He heard a bang and then someone else yelling.
“Hey, lady!” said the voice. “What the heck are you trying to do there?”
“Don’t you use that tone to me,” said Jen. “I’m just trying to get my husband out of extreme jeopardy.”
“Huh?” said the voice. “You better come on down. Pronto.”
Jen looked at Clyde. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Then she disappeared. Clyde heard her on the ladder. Then he heard heavier steps on the ladder. Then there was a guy in a public works uniform looking over the edge. The guy took one look and started laughing. “Hey, Dave,” he said.” Get over here. You gotta see this.” Then he disappeared and a moment later another guy’s head popped up. For a minute he was laughing too hard to talk, then he said, “What the heck are you doin’ in there?”
Clyde decided to make a long story short if not sweet, or one hundred percent accurate, and he just said, “I fell in.”
“Yeah, I guess you did,” the guy said.
“Can you get me out?” Clyde said?
“Yeah,” the guy said. He was still laughing.
“Ah, would you?” said Clyde. “Please?”
The guy pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. “In a minute,” he said. “We’ll have to get a rope. Stay right where you are.” Clyde heard him going down the ladder and then everything was quiet. He thought for a moment that he heard Jen crying and then decided that one, she wasn’t a crier, and two, crying wouldn’t have sounded that perky. I guess I can’t blame her too much, he thought, but she did buy that wine cooler.
After about another three days, the first guy was back with a long rope. He tossed one end to Clyde. Then he looked down at the ground. “You got that end, Jack?” he said. “Yeah,” said Jack. Clyde grabbed his end of the rope and the two guys started to pull. They got him up to where he was bent over the edge of the dumpster with his legs inside and his arms where he could just touch the
ladder. The two guys gave one more pull. Clyde slid down the ladder head first. Dave turned him right side up. For some reason his voice didn’t want to work, so Jen did the thanking. “Time to go home now,” she said.
When they were in the car, she said, “Not everybody rinses those beer cans, do they?” Clyde sniffed and decided she was right, but he didn’t say anything.
Sure enough, when they got home, they found the old phone books still in the trunk of the car. “I guess I could take those the next time,” Jen said. Clyde just crawled off to bed.
By Christmas they had the gorgeous new city recycling cart and Clyde found out he had all kinds of ideas for decorating it, but Jen said, “No.”