There are a few things I've avoided talking about here, a few unwritten rules I've followed. I don't blog about my job or my coworkers (though lord knows this place would be 10x funnier if I did) and thus far, I haven't talked about my neighbors much. I've talked about the disappointment of kids avoiding us at Halloween because of the nudist that used to live here. But that's about it.
So well over a year ago, maybe even closer to two, when our neighbors stole our trash can, I let it go. We talked about it a LOT offline, but I didn't bring it up here, thinking maybe someday those neighbors would stumble across this site after the misunderstanding was all cleared up, and I didn't want to have to Lysol the archives.
That was when I was still naive enough to believe that the thievery was a misunderstanding.
We live at the top of a hill. At the bottom of the hill is a river. Our garbage pickup is in front of our house, and our front "yard" is basically a set of stairs down two terraced levels to the street. So every Monday night, Duke lugs our trash down the stairs to the street and sets bricks on top of the cans to hopefully prevent raccoons and wind from absconding with our garbage. Every Tuesday morning, the garbage company comes after we've both left for work. The garbage man (who receives a generous Christmas bonus for taking all sorts of things he is probably not supposed to accept) usually stacks the cans and the lids and the bricks in a manner that keeps them from blowing into the street, down the hill, and into the river. Sometimes, though rarely, the wind wins. I come home for lunch at 11 am. There is a limited window for Dorothy and Toto to take off, but they occasionally do. We haven't invested any time or effort into figuring out how to chain the cans down, because we don't want to make our garbage man's life miserable, there's absolutely no room to do it without blocking the sidewalk, and losing them is so rare it just doesn't seem worth it.
The first time that one of our garbage cans disappeared completely, with no trace, we found it exactly one week later. Across the street, with our neighbor's garbage in it. We put out one can. Our neighbors put out a can that matched ours, but not the rest of theirs. We thought "No, really, they can't really think that's theirs, can they? It clearly matches our other one. What the hell, man?" Because we still suffered from this naiveté that because we live in a small town, people would do things like return an errant garbage can that blew into their yard. It's what we would have done. It's an opportunity we would have taken to introduce ourselves. But because we hadn't put our name or address anywhere on the garbage cans, what were we going to do? Raise a huge stink with the neighbors we hadn't even met yet?
(I would like to point out that we also see these neighbors every June when they stand on their front steps, hand their children ziploc baggies, and point them towards the cherry tree in front of our house. Yes. They send their kids over here to pick a cherry tree directly in front of my house, while I'm standing there picking cherries myself, without walking over to say hello. They don't wave back when we wave. But I digress.)
So Duke and I spent a lot of time talking about this issue. Do we go knock on the door and say "Hey, we think you have our garbage can?" even though it's ridiculously obvious and see what they say? Do we just go steal it back? Do we act like total weenies and just go buy a new one? We went with the weenie approach. But Duke bought a can of yellow spray paint and painted his last name and our street address in ENORMOUS letters all over our remaining garbage can.
For 4-6 weeks, we watched them put our garbage can out with their garbage in it, shaking our heads. They always pulled their trash cans back inside before I got home from work, so we only saw it full. Then finally one day, we got home from work and they'd taken all of their trash cans inside except ours, which sat in the middle of the street saying "Come get me." So Duke did. And immediately painted his last name and street address all over it, so that it matched it's orphaned brother.
These garbage cans with the name and address have been the bane of my existence ever since. In every single photo that I take of Duke's construction projects, I have to stop and move the garbage cans out of the way, or I have to PhotoShop the name and address out later, or I have to contort myself in weird positions to get photos that don't include a garbage can. On a construction site, they are everywhere. No matter what I'm taking a picture of, I have to be conscious of not posting my street address to my Flickr stream.
So flash forward to two weeks ago. We either haven't had too many bad wind storms or else the neighbors didn't need a trash can very badly, because we've managed to hold onto it for 2ish years. But then we had a pretty hellacious windstorm, I came home for lunch, and it was GONE. No sign of it anywhere. I walked down the block towards the river, gave up, decided it was floating towards Peoria where it would undoubtedly wash up on DeNacho's beach.
Duke came home from work and said "So I see our neighbors stole our garbage can again." WHAT? The one place I hadn't looked? Their carport. Yeah. Right next to their garage, they have a shanty-style carport thing. There sat our garbage can, our name and address fully legible from all the way across the street, inside their carport.
Again, we debated. Do we go knock on the door? What the hell do we say? "Hi, this garbage can that says 12345 Happy Street? It's ours. Because we live across the street from you and that's our address. Can we have it back?"
That night, we had dinner with Duke's family, and his brother-in-law gave us the most brilliant idea ever. From that point on, he suggested, every time we had garbage to take out, we should walk the bag across the street, into their carport, lift up the lid on our garbage can, drop it in, turn towards their house, and wave.
But we didn't have very long to work up the nerve to actually do it, because the very next day, it was gone completely. Not visible anywhere within their carport. Duke thought perhaps they put it inside their garage, and decided he needed to get a closer look. Walk over there? Of course not. He got out the best magnification device he had.
The scope on one of his rifles.
I know, I know. I stood in the living room while he looked through the blinds in our front porch with his rifle pointed towards the neighbor's house. I believe I said things ranging from "I'm not bailing you out of jail" to "NO REALLY I'm not bailing you out of jail." But he saw nothing. Our garbage can had vanished while we debated the proper etiquette of asking for it back.
So a week passed, another garbage day came and went, and we wondered if they'd repeat the action, putting the can out and leaving it there. Nope. That day, I didn't come home for lunch, and in the evening when I came home, The Universe smiled on me and Mrs. Neighbor was outside when I drove past the front of our house. I immediately pulled over, threw my flashers on, and parked right in front of our house. I jumped out, grabbed our lone remaining empty garbage can, and started hauling it up the stairs. I waved at her and she acknowledged me, and then I said "It sure is windy. I need to get this inside . . . before it disappears." Big fake laugh. Ha ha ha HA! ~smile~
This was her opportunity to say "OH! We found your other one! I totally forgot! I've been meaning to come knock on your door!" or something else neighborly and blameless. Right? No. She nervously laughed and started walking towards the house faster.
We wrote it off, decided they just planned on keeping it, moved it inside or ditched it somehow, that it was gone for good.
NOT BY A LONG SHOT.
Tonight, Duke came home from work and said "Did you see it?" Their garbage was outside very early in the night, and they had put our garbage can out there - literally surrounded by their own. From the street and from our house, you couldn't see it. Other garbage cans, other bags, piled on every side of it. But through the trash, there was just the slightest hint of yellow spray paint.
So we walked to the bar for dinner. Walked past the garbage pile. Confirmed it was our can. Sat at the bar for a couple of hours while the sun set, waited for their kids to stop playing outside, waited for it to get dark enough that hopefully the other neighbors wouldn't see us digging through the trash.
Then we walked home, walked directly to their garbage pile, took a photo of our garbage can exactly as they'd positioned/hidden it, and then Duke emptied it onto their lawn and brought it home. He did a much nicer/neater job of it than I would have. The entire garbage can was filled with McDonalds refuse. Empty, it still smells like french fries.
As we walked across the street, I turned in time to see the neighbors scurrying away from the window on that side of the house. I'm sure they saw my camera flash go off.
The next time it happens, and I'm really not ruling out that possibility after all of this, we're filing a police report. I come from a place so small that the police blotter is comic gold. I'm not above bringing that crazy magic to Cherry Valley, people.
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