Monday, March 19, 2012

A Twist on Oliver


We just celebrated St. Paddy’s Day in the M Streets here in Dallas on Saturday.  A billion drunk people came and threw up in our yards and hurled in our streets and had a rather loud, but peaceful good time. They do it every year to celebrate the driving of the snakes out of Ireland. And now they have driven the snakes out of East Dallas. 

This year, the one-day riot and parade  seemed more managed than ever…even with our own family getting a parking ticket for having a car parked parallel in our own driveway.  Another story and one for the courts later this month. We were seated in the backyard and the cop could have simply asked, “Your car?”  And we would have said yes and he would have walked away.  But like I say, the courts will here this one later in the month. Stand by if I lose I have the headline all ready “ Justice Denied!”

But as I awakened on Sunday morning, I heard cleaning crews moving along our streets, picking up the empty containers left in the grass and along the curbs and the cups and cans that had somehow missed the more than one hundred trash receptacle that lined our neighborhood streets.

I drove away from my house heading to a local ATM because my kids were home from college and well…you know…That’s when I saw him. Pushing his grocery cart along filled with aluminum cans. 

Oliver Gold.

If you’re a friend to this blog you will remember my feature on him in  “Cardboard People” published in February. Oliver Gold was a down-on-his-luck guy who didn’t seem to have anything going for him. We got him a hot meal; a place to sleep and then someone in our group secured him a job. Yet here he was, at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning pushing a shopping cart along, as happy as could be, humming some Presbyterian Hymn about salvation and Moses. Presbyterians always had the most diverse musical lyrics of any group I knew, short of the Unitarians, who just sing about rocks and trees.

As I looked at him I feared all our work had been in vain. I stopped my car and rolled down the window. “Oliver what’s the haps?”  He smiled when he recognized me and pushed his cart toward me.
           
“John. Good to see you,” he exclaimed. He stopped twice and picked up a Silver Bullet and a Budweiser container and tossed them into the growing pile of metal collecting in his buggy.  “Business is good after yesterday.”

“Oliver, I thought we found you a job.”

“Oh, you did, John. You did.  But I’m unemployed each weekend, so to make a little spending cash I hustle the beer cans.  Good money in recycling, John.  Good money.”

We talked for a few minutes and I asked how he had been doing and he said life was treating him okay. He was holding down his job and the boss seemed to like him.  The weekend endeavor was earning him some extra spending money and as long as he could keep it hidden from his ex, then life would be good.

I had to get to the bank and he had to continue his rounds. And as I drove off I thought of all those people who thought of him as a beggar and a drifter.  But here he was on a Sunday morning, working the trade.  Doing business.  Keeping the American dream – in some tiny way – alive.

Business is good, Oliver.  The business of seeing people get back on their feet.

He’s not a cardboard man any more.  Today, Oliver Gold is a recycling mogul.  One basket at a time.



1 comment:

  1. I like the way you think John. Wisdom and insight are rare in this world, keep sharing.

    ReplyDelete