On Trash!: a Garbageman’s Story by Simon Paré-Poupart
By Andrea Elise
Good afternoon, HPPR listeners, this is Andrea Elise coming to you from Amarillo, Texas.
Today, we’ll talk about Simon Paré-Poupart’s biography, Trash!: A Garbageman’s Story. We’ve all heard adages like, “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” or someone “trash talking” another person, or even that something is “a load of garbage.”
There are many other metaphors for trash.One that comes to mind at this moment is simply, “the trash heap of history.”
Simon is a French-Canadian who lives primarily in Montreal, Quebec. He put himself through college and earned degrees in sociology and business while working as a journalist and social worker.
The schoolwork alone sounds arduous, but here is a man who does all of that AND works as a garbageman.
At a young age, children can be captivated by jobs that seem to require strength and visibility. (Even my husband, at 3 years old, aspired to be a garbage man.) Once socialization crawls in, though, the awe can turn to AWful.
How could we imagine anyone becoming addicted to running around hauling huge trash bags and plastic (even metal) containers all day? And why would we think that faster is better?
Apparently, there is an entire sub-culture that includes the various types of individuals who are drawn to garbage, and there is a popularity hierarchy within that culture. Sometimes the fastest person is the most popular.
One fellow whom Simon describes as very popular lives simply and is an alcoholic. His co-workers love and accept him for his speed in doing his garbageman tasks.
Simon makes what I consider a profound statement regarding that co-worker when he writes: “Sometimes, keeping your mouth shut is an elegant way of loving someone.”
Isn’t that a beautiful and noble idea? Maybe I’m alone in thinking of it as such, but I was astounded when I read that sentence.
Garbagemen are so under the radar of any societal acclaim that hardly anyone acknowledges their lives. The positive of that anonymity is that the expectation of rehabilitation of any kind does not exist.
They have a community, which Simon calls, “a brotherhood of trash.”
Even recyclables are really illusions that the planet is safe. The privileged are allowed to get rid of their waste; those not well-heeled inherit it. In the author’s mind, garbagemen are somewhere in the middle.
That being said, Simon finds his work thrilling. He thrives on the idea that almost anything can be used by someone.
What does it say about a society that seems to treat their discarded items and the people who handle them as part of the same landscape of undesirability?
Think about that the next time you take out your trash.
This is Andrea Elise for the High Plains Public Radio Readers Book Club.
