The Garbage Truck and The Tidy Wagon

Collecting garbage. Photo by Tom Franklin

I have never been unemployed since I started my first job at age thirteen.  The pandemic, a couple of underlying conditions, and a “Stay at Home” order changed that. On Friday I filed for unemployment.  Since I am self-employed as an independent contractor, I would not have qualified to receive unemployment under the old rules, but fortunately Congress added a provision that covers contractors and gig workers.  Filing for unemployment got me thinking about my past jobs. I am thankful for each one of them. Even the ones that weren’t the greatest because I learned something new with each one.

Way back in 1976, my family moved from Charlotte to Lake Norman. We had been camping there for years on a leased campsite in Outrigger Harbor. Outrigger was a combination marina and tiki themed family campground. 

There was a tiki themed restaurant called, wait for it…

Lake House 1976. Photo by Tom Franklin

“The Tiki Terrace!” The owner, Mr. Buck Teague, had also acquired an old barge and built a full kitchen and tiki themed dining hall on it. It had spiral stairs that lead to an upper deck pilot house. The captain would take groups on dinner cruises on a very different Lake Norman than the one you may know now. In the evenings the little outboard motor that powered the barge named “The Outrigger” would be the only noise, besides the ducks and geese, heard from the surrounding shores. I loved the place and knew that as soon as I was old enough, I would apply to work as the attendant on the gas dock.

Me and Mom at Outrigger Campsite. Photo by Tom Franklin

I was eager to start saving money so that I could buy a car as soon as I turned sixteen. My father talked to Mr. Teague and he explained that at age thirteen, I was too young to work on the gas dock yet. That job was currently filled by a high school-er named Sam Wallen. However, Sam needed help with some of his other duties and also needed to start training his replacement since he would be off to college the following year. Dad took me to the Social Security building in Charlotte where I applied for a work permit. I was allowed to work up to twelve hours per week. I was excited, even though the law also allowed my employer to pay me less than minimum wage because I was under sixteen.  I started at $1.85 per hour.

Photo by Tom Franklin

I was paired up with Sam for the entire summer. Summers, and especially weekends, were very busy at Outrigger. I learned pretty quickly that my job was to be a jack of all trades. If it needed to be done, then Sam and I did it. Sam ran the gas dock on the weekends, but his other duties were done before and after opening the docks, as well as throughout the week.  The two main parts of my job were cleaning the campground bathhouses and collecting the garbage from the campsites. I had barely been there a week when Sam told me it was time for me to learn to drive the garbage truck!  I thought he was joking. Sam was a very smart guy, so I was certain he knew that I was not old enough to drive!  But Sam was a young Libertarian and he explained that regular rules of the road did not apply, because the entire place was on private property. America the beautiful! 

The garbage truck had a manual transmission. Sam said the best way to learn to use the clutch was starting from a dead stop while on an incline. He had parked on a moderately steep hill and left the hand-pulled parking brake on. Sam sat in the passenger seat beside me. He gave very clear instructions: Step lightly on the gas. Slowly let the clutch out until you feel the point of friction.

Wait! I had no idea what that meant. Sam said that I will know it when I feel it. He was right.

Back to the lesson: Hold the gas and the clutch at the point of friction. Notice how it feels. While continuing to hold at the point of friction, release the parking brake. If the truck starts to roll backwards, then give it a bit more gas while holding position on the clutch until you find the point of balance.

Hold on again!  What does that mean? Sam said I would know when the truck stopped rolling backwards but did not move forward either. I was starting to get nervous. What if I just kept rolling backwards right into the lake, or one of the sailboat owners’ Jaguar or Mercedes?  Sam said not to worry. He would pull the parking brake if needed. It took several tries in which either Sam had to pull the brake, or I stalled out the engine. But when I got it, I had it. It was like magic. I had the power to make this giant garbage truck balance under my command! The rest came easy. Sam was the best driving instructor I ever had.

I spent that summer driving the garbage truck, while Sam rode on the sideboard. He would hop off when I stopped at groups of trash cans. He’d run and collect from one side, while I grabbed the bags out of the cans along the other side. The trash cans were 55-gallon drums with holes punched in the bottom so that water would not collect in them. They had metal lids that were heavy enough to stay in place most of the time. We would throw the smelly bags of garbage into the open sliding doors on the back of the truck.  Then we grabbed new bags and put them in the barrel. We secured them with a special way of looping the excess bag into a knot that cinched tightly on the drum.

Outrigger Harbor had another truck that we used every day. It was an old mail truck. A Jeep TP40. It had a roll-up door on the back. The back was filled with cleaning supplies, toilet paper, and plungers. They called it “The Tidy Wagon.”  And that is what we did. We drove the old mail truck to each of the four bathhouses and tidied them up. We actually did more than tidy up. We scrubbed them. We cleaned all the toilets twice a day. We scrubbed the showers. We detailed the sinks.  Mr. Teague said he wanted the toilets so clean that he could eat soup out of them! If anything was stopped up, we plunged it. Sam taught me how to adjust the jets on the tank-less toilets if the flush was too weak or too strong. Another lesson in balance.

There was always plenty of work to do. Cutting grass, washing windows at the Tiki Terrace, using a sling to clear the weeds from the shoreline. It was a great job. I loved most everything about it. I continued to work on the weekends once school started. Sam left for college the next year, so gas attendant was added to my responsibilities. I continued working there until my second year in high school. My friend Brian joined me the next summer. I taught him to drive a manual transmission just like Sam had taught me. The summer after that my older brother, Randy worked with me. I also taught him how to drive a stick drive using “The Sam Wallen Method.”

Dad shot this during Outrigger's annual regatta.

By the time I was sixteen, I had saved $2,250. I spent every last dime on the worst car ever made by Audi, a special edition 1978 Fox with gold pinstriping and the words “Blue Fox” written in gold script on each side! But that is another blog post.

  

  

Photo Dad took at Outrigger Harbor.

Those were magical days filled with honest work.  I learned something about the value of labor and just how much work it takes to save a little money.  And now I am stuck at home. 

For the first time since getting that work permit, 
I have no choice but to sit things out a bit.

I’ll be back in the game soon enough.

Puff and Circumstance

Peter, Paul, and Mary

“With this coronavirus pandemic, we've "lost our innocence". We no longer think that raging, out of control diseases are impossible HERE. We've put away our "childish" things -- sporting events, concerts, plays, etc. This song is -- perhaps (smile) -- ABOUT loss of innocence, growing up, and being more serious about life. "Peter Paul & Mary released "Puff the Magic Dragon" exactly 57 years ago today -- on March 16, 1963. Come on, let's all sing it together. While maintaining social distance.”  Loyd Dillon

Each morning I look forward to Loyd Dillon’s “On this day in History” post.  His posts are consistently positive, truthful, and thoughtful. They are often humorous. They are frequently inspiring. Sometimes they are all of the above.  And then there are the ones that make you reflect on something important. Many times, his posts trigger that spot in my brain that makes me think of a funny event or touching moment.  The post that I copied and pasted at the top of this page is a great example of how just a few sentences can really make a difference in someone’s day.

When I read the first sentence about losing our innocence, I was touched by the poetic truth of it. Loss of innocence is a theme that cuts across every form of art and literature. It happens to us individually and collectively. It happens to us over and over no matter how long we have lived. In the next part he alludes to something that we cannot deny; that we have been in denial. We have been like children without a care in the world.  We have been pretending and playing with our own version of “string, sealing wax, and other fancy stuff.”  In the song, Jackie has to put those childish things away and he must distance himself from Puff, his dear and special, magical friend. And now we must practice “Social Distance.” That is our circumstance.  

But I see hope in this post as well. And it sparked a memory of a small moment that occurred when at age 50 I began taking guitar lessons from a well-known musician and performer. Jamie Hoover is a genuine rock and roll legend. I won’t list his entire resume here, but he has played music to audiences that fill an arena. He has played guitar on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. I’m not kidding. It’s on YouTube!

Jamie had been the producer of my brother Randy Franklin’s music for years. He suggested that I call Jamie for lessons. I knew a few chords, but had trouble playing smoothly through them. I especially had trouble shifting into the ever-difficult B-minor bar chord.  I told Jamie shifting from G to B-minor was one of my goals.

Jamie showed up at my first lesson with the chords to “Puff the Magic Dragon” all written out in measures. He explained that it required shifting from G to B-minor.  He did not bring the lyrics that first day. He did not know yet that I also wanted to sing while I played.  So, we started working on it. Jamie kept singing the first verse and the chorus over and over, because we could not remember the other lyrics. I worked on playing the song without singing all that week. I was beginning to get the hang of just in time for my second lesson.

This time Jamie proudly waved a song sheet he had created with the chords in measures down one page, and the corresponding lyrics down the adjacent page. He explained, this way we can play it together and sing the whole song as we go along. It even included an intro and an outro.

Yes! I was on my way. I was going to learn to play a song from start to finish! Jamie assured me that I was on my way to becoming a “Rock God!” He is a smart businessman. 

So, here we go. We play the intro. I stumble awkwardly around the chord changes at first, but Jamie reminds me to relax. “It’s just the two of us here” he said. Okay. I got this. We start playing again. We get past the intro. We get past the verse and chorus that we had just sung over and over again the last time. We go on the whole adventure with Jackie and his mighty friend. We are really cooking now. I am managing through and Jamie is playing and singing in such a way that it seems like he is actually in the song. He is Jackie Paper. He is feeling the song and so am I.

Then it happens.

We get to the loss of innocence part. That sad, sad verse.

The one where Jackie Paper came no more. And then I hear the crack in Jamie Hoover’s voice. I look up from my guitar at him and I can see that he has been moved by the lyrics that both of us had forgotten. 

His voice was definitely breaking up a bit. And in that moment, I was so caught up in the emotion of playing music with another human being, that I actually felt a tear form in the corner of my eye. It was kind of silly. We were two grown men after all. But music, no matter how simple, has that power to move our emotions. Loyd’s words, in a short post can transport us to new insights or, in this case, back in time to an odd, yet touching moment that I shared with a real live rock star sitting on the sofa in my living room.

The “Puff Story” has grown to mythological proportions. I went to see Jamie play at a club in front of 60 or more people. He saw me from the stage and says into the microphone, “No Scott, we are not going to play Puff the Magic Dragon.” He then proceeds to tell the story of two grown men getting choked up over a children’s song. His version is hilarious and in it we are sobbing out of control!  The crowd was smiling and laughing. I wasn’t embarrassed, because as I looked around the room, I could see that the people were nodding their heads as they laughed and smiled. They got it.

I look forward to being able to get back out to hear live music without having to worry about catching a pandemic virus.  I look forward to a time when we can let ourselves fall back into innocence once again. But we must always be mindful that we are the grown-ups here and we cannot be lulled so deeply into our childish ways that we fail to get on with the adult responsibilities of looking out for each other. When this is over, we should let loose and sing silly songs loudly until the sun goes down. But when we wake up in the morning, we will need to get on with doing the good work that makes the world a bit better. Good work like Loyd does with his “Day in History” posts. Good work like teaching someone else how to play music and play it with feeling.

“Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honahlee
Little Jackie paper loved that rascal puff
And brought him strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff oh

Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honahlee
Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honahlee

Together they would travel on a boat with billowed sail
Jackie kept a lookout perched on puff's gigantic tail
Noble kings and princes would bow whene'er they came
Pirate ships would lower their flag when puff roared out his name oh

Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honahlee
Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honahlee

A dragon lives forever but not so little boys
Painted wings and giant rings make way for other toys
One grey night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more
And puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar

His head was bent in sorrow, green scales fell like rain
Puff no longer went to play along the cherry lane
Without his life-long friend, puff could not be brave
So Puff that mighty dragon sadly slipped into his cave oh

Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honahlee
Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honahlee”