I had a bit of a Blue Christmas this year. It was the first Christmas season in seven years that I was not out hauling. I would miss it more if was not gizzard-frosting cold out there right now.
Forced retirement from hauling came to me a couple months ago when the small local company I worked for sold to a very large company. Happens all the time. It's a bit of a sad tale, but one perhaps for another time. The point is I'm on the sidelines now, though with a trove of experiences and friends in the garbage business. An old-timer said to me, "Once a garbageman, always a garbageman." I'll keep on writing as "always a garbageman."
But back to Christmas in trash. I think it was my fourth post or so that described finding plastic baby Jesus in the trash. Every Christmas brings something special. This year it came vicariously. My friend Wes found this and posted the picture from the post-Christmas trash:
Another friend and former partner-in-trash commented: "I'm curious about the Ball Holder." The potty humor proceeded to stream forth, so to speak.
Last year we (Wes and I) found a whole beef tenderloin in a bin, perched on top of the rest of the trash. It was uncooked, still in its vacuum sealed package, unfrozen but kept cold in 25 degree weather. The label showed this four pound chunk of meat had been purchased at Costco for $24.99 per pound. The use-by date was over a month away.
"I suppose Kari would not be interested in this?" I asked, knowing well his wife has a zero tolerance policy on rescue-food. There was sadness in his eyes. Or was it fear? (BTW, that's a perfectly good junior compound bow and arrow set also thrown away in that same alley. It went to an excited young person at my church!)
Clearly, the beef was not meant as a Christmas tip for the trash guys. I suspect, though, it may have had something to do with some Christmas sadness in that family. Plans for a joyful celebration gone to trash. I imagine that someone in frustration, or exasperation, or sadness, or rage--threw that tenderloin away.
The biblical stories around Christmas are as tragic as they are hopeful. An unexpected pregnancy, suspicions and domestic strife, homelessness and genocide. Christmas has a long shadow.
I ate it with a few friends at our annual winter reunion. Roasted it in blazing coals, wrapped in salt and a cotton cloth--an old Colombian method called Lomo al Trapo, tenderloin in cloth.
It was amazing.
An unexpected gift, born, perhaps, of trauma. Wrapped in cloths. To me, Christmas is a good time to wonder about the human condition: the splendor and the horror. Angelic choirs sing of a miraculous, yet troubled birth. Divine and all too human. Tenderloin and trash.
As Homer says (also retrieved from the trash that day):
Santa Homer
