Lessons of Life 1968-69

1968 was my third year of teaching and coaching at Hemet High School. The year had been marked with mixed success in the classroom and on the athletic fields, but I was finally confident both as a teacher and as a coach. After the graduation ceremony, unexplainably held in the blazing midday heat of the Ramona Bowl, a group of teachers gathered with our wives and children at the home of one of our number for a few beers and a barbeque to celebrate the end of another year.

I could give the excuse that it was hot, or that one beer was my limit and I had consumed four, but honestly I don’t know how I would have acted if I had been stone cold sober. We were talking about yards. My friends and I were all renting homes, trying to decide if Hemet was the place we would all make our homes and watch our children grow. There were many compelling arguments to do this, but I think that Sheila and I were less decided about staying than our friends, who have now been there for almost forty years.

Our host, who already had three children, had recently taken the plunge into home ownership, and was in the process of removing the rockscape yard that was so common in Hemet and putting in a real grass yard for his kids to play in. His trash cans were filled with the small stoned gravel, and as we looked out the front picture window the trash men arrived to empty the five hefty cans that contained a week of trash, yard clippings and gravel.

When the first Hispanic man was unable to lift the can, the driver came around to help him, and together they were able to empty the cans into the truck bin. For some reason, this scene struck our group as incredibly funny; the struggling workers turned into slapstick comedy for the benefit of the white and highly educated audience. Our host told us that they probably weren’t supposed to take the cans because they were overweight, 75 pounds being the limit of weight that was supposed to fill the cans. From the sanctuary of our air conditioned rooms, we enjoyed the effort of those men to do their job in the searing heat, and for whatever reason, not one of us was able to put ourselves in the place of those brown skinned men.

After another year of teaching and coaching at Hemet High, I decided to pursue a doctorate degree in history with the intention of someday teaching at the college level. I had received several teaching fellowship offers and one scholarship, and we had decided to accept the position at the University of Connecticut. When the school year of 1968-69 ended I looked for a summer job to save money for the trip across the country and living expenses for the coming year. I was hired by the City of Hemet, and told by phone to report to the City Yard on Monday.

As I drove to work that Monday, my expectation was that I would be working with Park Maintenance, going from city park to park doing yard work. While this was below my educational qualifications, it was the highest paying temporary position I could secure. Imagine my surprise when I was assigned to the trash trucks, one of only two Anglos on the “Great White Fleet.” Although I would never wish to repeat it, this was one of the best experiences of my life, changing both my perceptions of others and of myself.

It wasn’t long before we set out on our route. My companion on the back of the truck was a small Hispanic man just two years back from fighting in Southeast Asia, a mission that I and almost all of my white friends had managed to avoid. As various escape routes from the draft closed, we squeezed through as the doors slammed shut behind us. Whether or not it was a rich man’s war, it was generally a poor man’s fight. As Oliver Stone describes the men in his in his movie Platoon,

           . . . . . guys nobody really cares about. They come from the end of the line most of them, small towns nobody ever heard of . . . . . 2 years high school’s about it, maybe if they’re lucky, a job in a factory waiting for em, but most of em got nothing, . . . . . they’re the poor, the unwanted.

It was not that we ran from the war. . . . . We didn’t have to. I comforted myself by maintaining that I was fighting the war on poverty. I know, it sounded lame even then.

We began that first day in the chill of darkness, but by 10am the temperature had reached over 100 degrees. I thought again of a person who had once said to me,

“Everything comes easy for you.”

Whatever my new friend thought of me, the white teacher, when we stopped for lunch at 10:30am at the dump, a disgusting place at the end of the earth, smelly, dusty and blistering hot, he had somehow secured a hat for me, saying,

“Gringo, you’re going to fry if you don’t cover up.”

I wasn’t sure about the term gringo, but I could tell he didn’t mean it unkindly. It never occurred to me to question where he had obtained the hat or its potential threat to my personal hygiene. Its broad brim covered my ears and shaded my nose. I wore it for the entire summer, and I still have it somewhere because of what it means to me.

One of my favorite memories of that summer came while working the street by the high school. The elderly teacher that I had replaced in 1965, Mrs. Mabel Almquist, lived on that street, and one morning when she was out with her trash I was able to say hello to her. She recognized me, and I have always wondered what her thoughts were that morning.

One of the only good things about working as a “trash technician” was that although we started at 6am, we generally were able to finish by 1pm because we literally ran the streets as the truck followed. This was good because Sheila worked till 5pm at a Cleaner, an equally hot, but at least a somewhat more hygienic place of employment, and I could be home to care for our son who was nearly two years old, cutting the hours of child care in half.

The evening of my first day some of my recently graduated friends came by and asked me to play basketball with them. After a great senior season where they won the Ivy League Championship, they had entered a summer league at the junior college and needed a sub. At first I said no, I was dead tired, having rarely worked a day of manual labor in my life, but I allowed myself to be convinced when Sheila said,

“Go play, you’ll have fun.”

We won the game against the junior college team, and I can say that I played acceptably, but near the end of the game I sprained my ankle badly. Although I put ice on it almost immediately, I could hardly walk the next morning. Staying home was not an option however. I was being paid hourly wages. Unlike teaching, where I had made a salary, there were no sick days. In addition, I didn’t want it said that the white guy, the teacher, couldn’t cut it after just one day. Sheila and Jeff dropped me off in the cool morning darkness, and I hobbled to the truck.

Ray and I worked the back of the truck while Elmer, the only other white guy on the truck, drove. Generally we rode on the back and jumped off at each stop. This proved to be agonizing for me, but I was able to hang in there and do the job. We were paid for eight hours of work, each truck running a route and then going to a checkpoint. We worked as fast as we could, partly because many of the guys had other jobs, their days generally fourteen hours of difficult, physically demanding toil. In the summer of 1964, when I was still in college, I had thought how hard I was working when I had two jobs, the second in an air conditioned clothing store.

On a day when everyone wanted to go home early, we would run the route backwards. Many people would not have put their trash out, and we would sail right by. This meant that the trash would be twice as heavy the following week, but it was often worth it. If there were full cans when we reached a checkpoint we simply ran that route and any other until all that day’s trash was collected. We all finished at the dump together.

The men were for the most part talented and resourceful. They could handle any equipment breakdowns, and were particularly hard working. The best part of the day was lunch, when Ray and I got to ride in the truck with Elmer. By collecting cans and bottles we usually obtained enough money for a modest fast food lunch for all of us, just another perk of the job. In a variety of ways Elmer and Ray found me amusing, the college boy/teacher working trash. On the way to the dump Ray said,

“Hey Gringo, why don’t you knock off for the day, I can handle it back there.”

 “You would do that for me?”

“)*(&(^%$#  man, you can hardly walk. You’re slowing us down.”

“Am I?”

“Ah shit. Not really, you’re doin’ OK.”

“I’m OK, I can hack it.”

“Maybe so, but you might break the (*)&^%$#@, then what?”

It’s been over forty years since that day, but when I think of what this guy, who I had known for only two days, was willing to do for me it almost brings tears to my eyes, especially when it was he that we had all laughed at the year before at the graduation party. I managed to make it through that miserable day, and my ankle was a little better each day the rest of the week. There was no question of going to the doctor, we had no medical insurance.

Three weeks later Ray was limping badly, having fallen off the truck at an unexpectedly quick stop. It turned out he had some shrapnel in his knee that the Army had decided not to remove. It became worse as the morning wore on.

“Get in the truck Dude; I can handle it back here.”

“Dude?” he said. and then  “No way.”

“You were going to cover for me, why is this different when you’re a lot worse off than I was?”

Ray looked at me a long minute, and then said,

“I have to count on this job, and they have to count on me. You white boy, you’ll be gone back to your world in another month.”

It was true, and the thought that the job was temporary, that there was an end, had kept me going. Well that and the paychecks. We lived a rather Spartan life that summer, every penny going into the bank. It was really a time to take one day at a time. Ray must have seen this hurt me because he reached up and slapped my head,

“It’s OK man, you’re all right. We can get through the day.”

And we did, with me trying my best to do more than my share.

That afternoon Sheila and I stopped for a beer at the Weestein, a little bar located next to the cleaner where she worked. Several of the Hispanic guys from the trash trucks were there, and throwing economic caution to the wind, we sent them a pitcher of beer. Sometime later a pitcher appeared at our table, and we both motioned for the guys to come over and they did. We had arrived, and I probably felt as close to that group of men than any group I have worked with before or since, finding a bond of friendship in an unexpected place while completely revising my world view.

Other than the stifling heat of the Hemet streets, one of the frequent hazards of slinging trash was the ever-present dogs. If Hemet had a leash law in 1969, we never saw any evidence that it was being enforced. I get along with most dogs, and the majority of the dogs we encountered were either friendly or harmless, but occasionally one would come after us. I got so I could tell the ones that were really dangerous, but Ray feared them all. I was usually able to make friends with a dog if its owner was around, and after that the dog came to greet us rather than eat us, but there was a shovel and a rake on the truck for cleanup. More than once I had to smack a dog with the shovel when they tried to attack Ray.

Ray was a combat veteran, he’d probably killed people, and he was tough enough to have survived a border crossing when he was twelve, but for some reason he was terrified of dogs. There were a couple of harmless small dogs that behaved aggressively, as though they were Pit Bulls. There was one in particular that came after us every week. The first time he attacked I just kicked him in the face and never had any more trouble, but Ray’s unreasonable fear of the dog seemed to feed its aggressiveness. The little beast once sank his teeth into Ray’s boot just as he leaped for the safety of the truck and actually hung on until Ray was able to shake him off. I threatened to toss the offending canine through the trash compactor on my last day of work. Ray cautioned me repeatedly about this but I asked him rhetorically,

“What are they going to do, fire me?”

On my last day at the end of a summer that sometimes seemed an endless preview of the Purgatory the nuns said awaited the sinfull, we arrived at the dog’s house, and sure enough, the little creature sprinted from his chosen place of ambush, yipping and snarling. From the sound of his bark you would have thought he weighed 150 pounds instead of twenty. I decided to teach him a permanent lesson, and as he leaped at me I kicked him hard in the nose while Ray ran and leaped to safety on the other side of the truck. The dog quickly vanished, and I loaded the trash without any further problems while Ray remained on the truck.

But on this day the homeowners had thrown away a feathered pillow and a can of red paint. After being crushed, the contents of the pillow looked very much like the fur of the little dog, which appeared to be some kind of poodle/rodent mix. When the catch bin cycled through, the combination of the red paint and the pillow contents really looked like the dog had been crushed in the bin.

“OH NO JEEEM,” Ray exclaimed. YOU HAVE KEELED THE LITTLE DOG. You stupid deeekhead, these people are really going to be pissed.”

I bit my tongue to keep from setting him straight, thinking, this could be fun, but Ray seemed to be as upset about the dog’s death as he was about the possible repercussions. Although he feared the dog, he really didn’t want him hurt. He would never himself have used his foot, and certainly not a shovel, on the misanthropic canine. We left the street without seeing the dog again.

We said goodbye that day, and although I thought that I would probably never see him again, we both struggled with the words. He had become a good friend in a short time, and the entire experience had changed me. I would never again look upon any job, or any person, as beneath me. The guys on the truck were amazing, hard-working, intelligent and funny and they could fix nearly any equipment breakdown on the spot. It’s a humbling experience to find that you are a below average garbage collector. Ray was a great example of an American in every sense of that word, a hard-working family man who had served his country bravely in an unpopular war.

The year at the University of Connecticut passed quickly. Rather than resign, I had taken a leave of absence from Hemet High School, so I had a secure teaching job waiting for me there in the fall of 1970. As things turned out, I did not enjoy teaching at the college level as I thought I would, and I found I missed teaching and coaching high school students. I received a Masters Degree in History, and was offered a job at Corona del Mar High School in Newport Beach. Rather than just send my letter of resignation to Hemet, I drove out to deliver it in person and see a few of my friends.

As I drove up the main street of Hemet, toward the high school, I found that the two people I most wanted to see most were Ray and Elmer. I turned left at the Hemet City Yard, thinking I would find out where they were that day. I checked into the office, I found to my surprise that Ray was now the foreman/dispatcher/problem solver for the city. As I walked out toward my car, he recognized me across the massive city yard. The first words out of his mouth were,

“Jeeem, you didn’t kill that little dog.”

“No I didn’t, but I had you going, didn’t I?”

“You sure did, the little sonofabitch bit me the next week. I wasn’t ready for him.”