The Evergreen Life

I've been slow to hop aboard the blogger express. I find my life too dull to really "blog" about and my writing leaves something to be desired. Yet I've caught myself thinking as of late that though my life may seem bland and monotonous to me, not everyone knows what it's like to run a garbage company from the ground up. Thus I decided to document my life in the garbage biz.

Norristown, Pa. Greasy, dirty, ghetto-fabulous Norristown: Home to Evergreen Waste Solutions. My brother Adam and his business partner Dan chose this suburb just outside of Philadelphia to start up their trash hauling company.

I've often reflected on how sad it is that this part of the country, so rich in our nation's history, has become just plain sleazy. But it's defiantly got it's own flavor. The people are rough around the edges and always say what's on their mind. All of us from Utah are constantly taken aback by their bluntness, but they are essentially good-hearted people. All the buildings are old fashioned and would be cool-looking if they weren't so run down and grimy.

Our garbage yard, where we house all of our garbage trucks and cans and where my office is, is in a particularly ghetto part of town. We operate out of a tall, green industrial building. It fits all four of our garbage trucks and hundreds of our trash cans nicely and could easily fit more. Much to my chagrin, however, it has no bathroom. As I am cooped up in the office from 8am to 5pm every weekday, this often becomes a problem. The only bathroom at my disposal is down the street in another grungy industrial building run by a company called "Phoenix Recycled Plastics." During times of desperation, I find it necessary to run over to our neighbor's and use their bathroom. The owner, Mark, though he is a nice-enough guy, tends to mutter at me under his breath every time he catches me sneaking in and makes me feel rather more or less unwelcome.

If that wasn't enough, one day Brie was visiting me up in the office and decided she couldn't wait till she got home to use the restroom. She ventured over to Mark's. On her way down the street she ran into "Steady Eddy," who runs "Affordable Container Service" farther down the street. Steady Eddy, dubbed so by Adam and Dan, is a classic Philadelphian. Seeing Brie, he shouted to her, "What are you doing??!"

"I'm just going to the bathroom. Our building doesn't have one yet."

"Don't you know these streets are filled with ex-cons?? You can't walk through here alone! It's dangerous!"

There you have it. I've done the math and I figure that in the 200ft it takes me to get the restroom I have a 70% chance of being either mugged, raped, or murdered. And if I make it that far unscathed, it's only to be muttered at by Mark....so most of the time I just hold it.

So there is a little taste of the Norristown, garbage life. More to come!