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Grandpa’s Boy Whipped Out A Fat Knot
And I’m pretty sure that Iridium flare was him smiling at me.
I’d roll with my Grandfather when he would go collecting from his commercial accounts. He owned the largest waste management company in the area at the time and business was booming.
Every visit to a customer site was the same. Pull up to an office trailer, stomp up the stairs, yank open the door, and burst inside. Everyone would look up and start smiling.
Nervously.
I’d be handed a little white styrofoam cup half full of stale black coffee and told to go wait outside on the steps. Really? Even back then my little 7-year-old head was thinking “WTF boss?”
Occasionally he’d find a little note in his pocket from my Grandmother.
She’d put notes in his pocket to remind him of things he had to do later that day. I vividly recall one time when we stopped to pick up a new suit from the men's store.
He was wearing what he wore to work. Green Dickies, company name and his nickname stitched onto patches over the shirt pockets, and his old work boots.
A garbage man.
We walked through the store and up to the counter. Salespeople glanced, but no one paid any attention to us. We stood there at…
