Galvanized Trash Cans

“You should build a little shed or buy one of those plastic rubbish bins from Home Depot

  to hide your trash in.”

She said.

“I don’t wanna hide my trash.”

I replied.

“I like looking at the metal cans...I’m a holdout...nobody else around here has metal cans...

  they all have plastic.   I like the way they sound when I drag them on the concrete and 

  clunk them down at the curb...metal cans are a lost art...reminds me of when I lived in the

  city...except they had holes bored through them and were linked together by a length of 

  heavy guage steel link chain, bolted to the wall. The same kinda chain all of the bikers 

  used, wrapping it around the frame and rims, only to have some pro come along and ice

  their lock and hit it with a hammer, speeding away on their bike moments later.

“The same thing with the trash cans...if they weren’t locked down, they’d disappear. I don’t

  know what metal was worth in those days. People were stealing working pipes just to get

  high. They’d sneak in the basement and turn off the water and heat and steal whatever 

  they could. We’d take turns watching. If we knew the fuckers were down there, we’d get

  the whole building marching down into the basement with baseball bats. It was war.”

“Imagine that.”

I told her.

“Someone fighting off the rats to steal the trash cans?”

“The chains, the address painted sloppily on the side of each can in red paint...it didn’t

  matter! If you weren’t looking, those cans disappeared!’

“I don’t hafta paint no numbers or addresses on those cans. Out here, nobody wants

  metal cans. They prefer plastic.”

“Imagine that?”

I asked her.

“Some poor sonuvabitch stealing trash cans.”

“Yet, it was an epidemic.”

“Nah.”

I finally answered her.

“I like the to look at my trash cans there by the side of the house.”

“I like the clatter that they make early in the morning when the crew comes by. Scattering

  dark silent birds into the 5AM orange sky.”