The Can Man Can

Saturday mornings are pretty quiet in my little corner of the world, so it’s easy to hear the Can Man pushing down the alley towards my house. The rattle and hum of his rusted metal shopping cart herald his arrival, like the fife and drum of Civil War days, leading the troops into battle. An older, black gentleman with a wide, gentle smile, his shoulders are stooped, and his gait is slow but steady. Pausing every 20 feet or so, he liberates the bags filled with aluminum cans everyone has hung out for him on their back gates; that is, everyone but me.

Now it’s not like I didn’t save cans for him; I absolutely did! But it’s only when I hear the wonky wheels of his cart careening down the block that I realize I forgot to put them out. Admonishing myself with every step, I run from the back porch to the back gate, hoping to catch him. I don’t. And I watch in utter dismay as the Can Man comes to the end of the rutted, unpaved alley and hangs a right on Georgia Ave. at not-breakneck speed.

My first thought is to run after him, but I’m barefooted and not inclined to endure the certain pain that would come after even just a few steps. There’s definitely no time to retrieve my shoes from the house because by the time I get back here I’ll have lost him for sure. So, I do the next best thing: I jump up and down and begin screaming, “I have cans! I have cans!”

Between the cacophonous clatter of those cans being shaken in the air and my high-pitched cries, I’m surprised and kind of disheartened when he doesn’t turn around. I know the Can Man is probably pushing 80 and possibly hard of hearing, and I shouldn’t take it personally, but the fact that he doesn’t notice me at all, despite my putting it all out there, disappoints me, and for a moment it reminds me of other times I’ve been disappointed by men. But I decide it’s best to let that thought go before I spin off into a self-induced shame spiral. The Can Man is gone, clearly on a mission to visit other people’s gates. He’ll be back; I tell myself. And by then I’ll have even more cans to give him.

The next Saturday the Can Man returns just as the sun has climbed over the horizon, and as I hear him approaching, I dash out to the gate to greet him. But this time he has a companion: a middle-aged white guy with more hair on his hands than on his head. And stepping over to take the bag of cans still dangling from my fingers, he smiles from behind an uneven array of dull, yellow teeth and announces himself in a screechy southern drawl. “I’m Dollar Bill,” he nods at me as he deposits my carefully curated collection into the rusted metal cart. The Can Man nods at me and smiles before he and his new compatriot proceed down the alley and hang a right on Georgia.

Now that Dollar Bill has introduced himself, I suddenly wonder why the Can Man never did the same and, more importantly, why I never asked. Was he content to be known by his job title? Heading back to the house, happy to have finally handed my bounty of aluminum cans over to its rightful owner, I determine to ask the Can Man’s real name the next time I see him. But the next time never comes. The following Saturday the OG Can Man is nowhere to be seen and Dollar Bill, who’s not only seen but definitely heard, is flying solo. He’s a chatty dude, which would be fine if he’d give me the information I crave, like, where is the old Can Man? Is he gone for good? And oh yeah, by the way, what’s his name? But Dollar Bill just wants to chat about crap I have no interest in, and either he hasn’t got any answers, or he prefers his soliloquy to a conversation. Either way, the sound of his thin, reedy voice is making me want to scream, and I tell him I’ll see him later and head for quieter ground.

A few Saturdays pass without any OG Can Man sightings, and it’s clear that Dollar Bill has taken his place. As the years pass, he becomes a fixture in the neighborhood. The owner of a body shop a few blocks away sets him up with a room at the back of his place with access to plumbing. And then someone leaves him enough money to buy a Mini Cooper, which he proudly drives around the neighborhood, a small open trailer hitched to the rear, and a miniature American flag flying on the antenna. He starts doing odd jobs then; light construction and the like, and in his stead, a friend of his adopts the Can Man moniker.

But by this time, things have changed. The once bohemian landscape has been replaced by tall and skinnies and the tradition of leaving cans for collection goes the way of the historic homes and tall trees that have been eradicated. The newbies toss their cans into recycling bins, and where once there was a Can Man pushing an old shopping cart up and down our alleys, now it’s more of a dumpster dive. This makes me miss the Can Man and the early years of my tenure in the neighborhood, terribly. He epitomized the spirit of what we were and what we hoped to be; neighbors who knew each other by name and marked our Saturday mornings with a small tradition, which, if you think about it, was kind of sweet.

I still hang a bag of aluminum cans on my gate every Saturday morning; it saves the new guy from rifling through my recycling bin. But I don’t just do it for him; I do it for myself because it reminds me of a simpler time in the Nations and the reason I decided to call this neighborhood home. Sometimes, if I close my eyes, I can still hear the rattle and hum of a rusted old shopping cart heading down the alley toward my house. I know the sound is all in my head, just the ghost of a memory. But on this particular Saturday morning, as I hang a bag from the gate, I’m certain of one thing; if anyone can deliver a visceral memory just when I need it most, the Can Man can.