Clickety Clack:

Clickety Clack! Clickety Clack! Clickety Clack! I hear the familiar sound of wheels on asphalt. Is it a skateboarder? The sound is too heavy for a skateboard. Is it a roller skater? Nobody wears quad skates these days except for me and I don’t roll down the street in them anymore. You can hear the sound of metal clinking and rattling. It must be Cracky Jackie pushing her grocery cart up the street. I wonder what sort of junk she’s looking for today? Usually there is a filthy stuffed animal doing the driving in the little fold away seat with matted fur from a rainstorm.

I wonder why Barnes Grocers lets people take the carts from the parking lot? It’s always been a service in the neighborhood. Buy some groceries and push them a few blocks home and leave the cart next to the curb. Days later a Barnes van pulls up and two well built teenagers hop out and load it up. Wouldn’t it be easier to just deliver the stuff?

Clickety Clack! Clickety Clack! Clickety Clack! The sound stops. Then starts again. Then stops. She must be rooting through my trash. She must have just rummaged next door in Mr. Dudley’s trash. He doesn’t waste and he recycles everything. Way ahead of his time for a ninety year old man.

Once I determined the sound is definitely a grocery cart, I grab my camera ready to spring a picture of the notorious Jackie on the world. Quietly I raise the blinds and lift the window. It’s a grocery cart all right but not Jackie it’s someone new. It's not Crazy Curtis who is in the funny farm these days after hacking up a code enforcement officer with a meat clever. That cart is filled to the brim with bright shiny aluminum cans. He’s moving in on Jackie’s turf, she won’t like that one bit. No sir. Not one bit.




















Clickety Clack! Clickety Clack! Clickety Clack! Next stop my house. Oh I do so hope there is something in my trash he can use. I cut the soda out of my life almost a year ago and promptly lost fifteen pounds in the process. So no cans in my bin. Maybe there is something he can use. I polished off a six pack of beer at the beach last week, but they were bottles. I know, glass on the beach I hear you say, but I always just leave my footprints behind. Never trash. This new fellow has no need for glass only aluminum.




















Maybe he’ll have better luck at Mrs. Johnson’s place across the street. I see her haul a twelve pack of Coke inside at least twice a week. Bingo! Mrs. Johnson is the gold mine of the block today at least twenty cans and a bonus drum of some sort.




















Clickety Clack! Clickety Clack! Clickety Clack! He’s on his way. I wonder what the lesbians have in store for him? They’re vegans and they compost. Slim pickings there. I need to recycle more often. I like to help out where I can.