In The Mouse's House
Eudell Watts
(c)
Copyright 2025 by Eudell Watts
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I
was blessed to spend the first twenty years and more working
alongside and with my father. He was a commercial waste hauler. He
taught me how to work. He taught me how to treat other people. He
taught me honesty. Most importantly he was one thing a lot of my
friends growing up did not have. He was there for me. Growing up in
the fifties and sixties my brother Jim and I worked with dad before
and after school. As we grew we were sent at times with hired help.
Brother John was not only younger but smaller. He compounded that by
being quiet and shy. This was something he would eventually grow out
of, believe me. This is in no way a put down of John by any means. He
went on to be the absolute best all around athlete in the family as
well as garnering outstanding academic accomplishments at the U of
Minnesota. As a result of his size and age at the time though dad
never required him to work on a regular basis like Jim and I and
later David whose work ethic and dedication or desire to contribute
in a positive manner came more by choice than ours did. David’s
work ethic in the family is legendary.
There
were times however when dad would send John along to help in an
effort to make him learn and understand how to work, also to simply
help out a bit. On a Saturday morning dad sent John along with me on
a trash route. Since I'd only held my drivers license for a year or
so John must have been nine or ten years old. During the school year
on weekends dad would send us out on a route that a hired person had
been running. Most of the help he hired in those days were good men
who gave him an honest day's work for the pay they received. But,
there were always the “Boscoe Davison's” and the "Salty
Dosmans” of the world. The “Roger Brooks’s.”
(not real names)They were not alone. They belonged to the special
group constantly looking for ways to exploit and or take advantage of
someone else's generosity and common decency.
On
weekends depending who we were replacing we ran the risk of a
nightmare. Most of these guys were basically on a salary and as a
result they constantly looked for shortcuts and creative ways to
finish work early like simply leaving part of the trash out there.
Asking one of us to finish by ourselves and keep quiet about it was
almost a favor compared to some of the other creative ideas they came
up with. The absolute worst one and the one dad detested the most
involved the super markets that had bins in the back of the store.
They had no top on them but the walls were built high enough that you
could not see over the tops.They had doors on them. As a result
people could not see inside. So, when these guys came along to pick
up the trash through the week they simply threw the larger items of
the top in the truck leaving small stuff on the floor of the bin All
the while they are doing this they are walking on and trampling small
boxes, paper, bottles some broken, wire and a multitude of other
things including boards with nails sticking out of them. Each day
they would leave more and more, all the while trampling it down.
After several days and perhaps a rain or two you can imagine the mess
several layers of this mix would make by the end of the week. Heaven
forbid it goes into a second or third week. And, perhaps the sun
coming out for several of these days working it's wonders made for a
real mess.
On
this terribly hot Saturday morning with John along we were forced to
clean up one of these routes. After the first several stops I
realized we were in for a long day not so much because of all the
extra trash but the time and effort in cleaning it up at almost every
store we stopped at. It was fairly easy to tell when some of the
refuse was old and obviously more in volume then the place normally
had. It was hard for us to understand because whenever dad hired
someone in those days he didn't just give them the keys and send them
out with a truck. He always took them out with him for a week or so.
He not only checked their driving and how they treated the truck, he
showed them just as he had us how he wanted the job done. I mean when
he left one of those trash bins behind a supermarket you could hold a
picnic there. What I mean is he kept a broom at most of them and
always had a shovel on the truck and when he finished he swept the
place up to the point you could practically eat in there. The fact
that there was a door and it was kept closed resulting in absolutely
no one being able to see in there was of no consequence to him. He
could have cared less. He was hired to clean them up and that's just
what he did. He expected us and anyone he hired to do the same. It
just did not always work out like that. He actually demanded it from
us so if the weekend came around and one of the drivers left a bunch
of trash on the floor from the past day or week before we had to
clean it up. It wasn't easy most of the time. Especially behind super
markets because of the unusual mix of corrugated boxes, wooden and
wire bound crates and such all smashed up with bottles, bags, fruits
and vegetables. All this mixed into all kinds of trash made a shovel
almost useless, and remember these guys were walking all over it
sometimes for several days. It was very hard and time consuming to
clean up.
On
this Saturday afternoon Brother John and I arrived at the rear of a
local supermarket that I knew to have heavy sales on Friday evenings
so I expected the bin to be overflowing. I certainly was not
expecting the sight that awaited us when we came around the corner of
the building at the rear of the store. “Wow!” boxes and
trash overflowed out of the bin and clear out to the alley. There
would be no early finish for us. Joking, I told John to cancel his
plans for the night. Heck, I was the one who would be canceling plans
for the evening. We put a whole load on the truck and had to make a
run to the dump and we weren't even inside the bin yet.
Once
we returned we dug in again. After a short time we worked our way
inside the door and cleared a portion of the debris onto the truck. I
was astounded to see the tremendous amount of refuse and debris. It
was quite easy to see someone had gotten away without cleaning this
place up for a long time. There seemed to be everything you can
imagine in the form of waste trampled and crushed all over the floor
of the bin. As we worked it became evident that most of it had become
soaked from rain. It was soggy and stank to high heaven. We had to
throw the big stuff off the top and then deal with the mess on the
floor.This place was one of the worst I'd seen. It was going to be a
long time pulling out what I could by hand and then try to shovel
what remained. It was terribly hot and I instructed John to stand
back out of the way. I did not want him to get hit with a piece of
flying glass or something as I attempted to shovel stuff onto the
truck. This went a little faster but it was heavy and tiring
After
a period of time I'd worked my way in pretty good and I stopped to
rest for a minute. Well, young John stepped up and said”let me
try some.” I told him “it's hot and it's pretty heavy and
messy also.” He still wanted to try so I gave him the shovel
and stepped around to the side of the truck out of the way in order
to rest a bit.
John
threw a few shovel fulls on to the truck. They weren't very big ones
but I figured whatever they were they would be a help. So, I'd rest a
minute and let him have at it. All of a sudden I heard his blood
curdling scream come from inside the bin. I couldn't get there quick
enough. All the while my mind was filled with thoughts of trying to
explain to my father how I let John get his hand cut off or
something. He’d stepped on a rusty nail or something of the
like. On and On. I jumped through the opening of the bin expecting to
see John a mass of blood or at the least all messed up. Nope! There
stood John, shovel in hand and frozen in time. He was stone still.
Looked like a museum piece.
He
was staring straight ahead and down. I turned to look to see just
what was in his line of vision that could have terrorized him so. At
the other end of that line of sight staring back at my brother was
one of the largest rats I'd ever seen. He or she as it turned out
looked even more menacing there as it was all reared up on its hind
legs with teeth exposed and was actually making a bit of a hissing or
snarling noise. It also looked as if it would spring at any second.
Wow! I did a double take. At the same time I jumped in front of John,
grabbing the shovel on the way by. The rat sprang and I swung
simultaneously. For a moment that shovel was a ball bat in my hands.
I don't know where John disappeared to. I do know that I hardly had
time to get the shovel back around before the big ole thing sprang
again, and I popped it again and again. Still it attempted to get at
me, all the time making the ugliest noises. Noises, matched only by
the sounds coming from John somewhere outside of the bin. Once I hit
it and it actually slammed into the wall of the bin but it came back
almost as if the blow hardly phased it. It finally stayed down though
and I left the bin a bit shocked and tired from a real dog fight.
Now
I had to go find John. Wherever he was I figured he was probably
traumatized for life.”John” I called out. “The rat
is dead. Come back Please!” I managed to get it out without
attracting too much attention to us. John soon appeared from
somewhere and I put him in the cab of the truck asking him to wait
there while I finished up. quite a few minutes later I was three
quarters of the way through the remaining trash. I went to get John.
It took some effort but I finally coaxed him out of the truck in
order to show him just why we'd had such a hard time earlier with
that huge rat. Back down under the bottom of the refuse pile was a
nest with five or six quite small baby rats in it. Some of them with
eyes not yet opened. We had disturbed and invaded the hiding place of
a mother and her little ones. She was simply trying to protect them.
I
was born, raised and educated in the midwest. A graduate of St
Ambrose University, I hold a master’s degree from Western
Illinois University and a culinary Arts degree from Scott Community
College. In my eighty years plus, I have spent time as a truck driver
and small business owner, operating 55 over the road power units
engaged in interstate commerce. I spent a brief period as a school
teacher, small college student counselor and ball coach. I am an
award winning chef and pit master. Through these years, I have spent
time speaking in schools, prisons, service clubs and any place that
will listen to me as a storyteller.
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