Hey, you. Got a truck, or access to a truck?

Nope. Dude ain’t got no truck.

What about you? Got a truck? A trailer? Cargo van?

Nope. Nothing of the sort. Times are hard.

So, I’m downtown asking questions again. It turns out there aren’t a lot of people out there who have access to trucks. They have bicycles and mopeds and a lot of tiny cars with really loud stereos, but try hauling your crap to the dump with one of those.

You see where I’m going here, right? Yes, it’s the same old rant about the same old trash.

Lewiston used to provide a service in which workers would ride up and down the streets hauling away all forms of trash. It was a Golden Time, a time when garbage disappeared from the downtown as if by some cool magic trick. Before they went to their doom, ancient TVs, stained mattresses, dented bird cages, sagging sofas, battered bureaus and comically outdated VCRs got one last chance to see the world from their heaps along the downtown sidewalks. I got to marvel over those heaps; the frugal go-to shop for free loot and then it was all hauled away to be disposed of in a safe and professional manner.

Good times.

There are probably some stats on how many tons of clutter got hauled away during that trashtacular time. I’ll save you all from confusing numbers by estimating that it was a literal crap-ton. And now that they don’t offer that service anymore, an equal crap-ton remains in basements, in sheds and in massive heaps cuddled up to the sides of tenements everywhere, waiting to either rot and rust or to be burned.

“I wish there was someone smarter than me out there,” wrote local trash crusader Andrew Hall, “who could do the math and figure out how much money it cost to deal with the aftermath of eliminating dump week, versus how much was saved by not having it.”

You see his point, right? The city might have saved a few thousand pennies by getting rid of the program, but now you have all that trash sitting around and tempting deviants with lighters. Every time we have an arson spree around here (it’s as sure a sign of spring as the first naked man in Kennedy Park), the city goes on and on about how we’ve got to do something about all that trash. If only there were some solution!

There is a solution. But they don’t employ it anymore.

Now there’s Open Dump Day, where folks can haul their own legless chairs, dishwashers, sinks, toilets, busted weight benches and worm-eaten lumber to the landfill. For free. But you’ve got to have a truck.

“Open Dump Day is great,” Hall said, “if you have a way to get trash to the dump. A lot of downtown residents are lucky to have a vehicle that passes inspection, never mind a truck. How are they going to get the trash to the dump? It seems the city is wishing the trash accumulation away, shirking responsibility, passing the buck, blaming landlords, everybody but themselves.”

So, the solution is right there in front of us, as big and insistent as a mound of broken desks, rusted water heaters, ancient computer monitors, crumbled ceiling tiles, browned Christmas trees, headless mannequins, battered shopping carts and, that one time, the lower half of a casket with a peace sign painted upon it.

The solution? Either bring back Trash Pickup Day or buy everyone a new truck.

I’d like a blue one, please.

Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. Truck-loaners and cool tricksters can email him at mlaflamme@sunjournal.com.

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