Border Street: Man's battle for parking is waged with trash cans

By Tina Griego, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Thursday, October 5, 2006

Longtime Eddie's unexpected battle with civilian authority begins in the last days of summer. The neighborhood inspectors - called to Border Street by the Fed Up neighbor - have finished their first round of door-to-doors and have returned to check up on the responses to their requests that neighbors pick up the trash and cut the weeds and stop storing various items outside. Such items include Longtime Eddie's old freezer, which he had placed temporarily on the driveway and which he had hauled away the day after the first inspection visit.

During this second visit, however, an inspector mentions to Longtime Eddie, that, generally speaking, the city does not allow its residents to leave their large, green trash bins out in the street once the garbage collectors have emptied them.

The plastic garbage can, tall and sturdy, had become Border Street's main line of defense against untoward and unwelcome parking in front of homes. This practice of neighbors or their guests parking in front of another neighbor's house is not illegal. It is, however, one of the biggest sources of resident complaints throughout the area, says the Border Street cop, who recently had to tell a woman that she could not keep parkers away by placing orange traffic cones in the street. They can park in front of your house, he told her, as long as they don't keep the vehicles there more than 72 hours at a time and they aren't blocking your driveway. She was not, he reports, pleased with this response.

Border Street residents had not resorted to traffic cones since the trash bins, parked in the gutter, proved remarkably effective. The trash can tactic was employed not only by Longtime Eddie, but, among others, the Teacher's mother and father, the Fast-Food Worker and the Fed Up neighbor. The Fed Up Neighbor, however, found the sight of a trash can in the street, well, trashy. With her sense of orderliness, it was perhaps inevitable that she would decide long before the others to roll her trash can back to its spot at the side of the house.

It was also inevitable that the spot in front of her house would be quickly seized, and has been most recently occupied by a gray sedan, which, as far as she can tell, has not been moved for a week.

Longtime Eddie recalls that he and the inspector had a somewhat odd conversation about the trash can situation in which the inspector mentioned he could be a real stickler, that even storage sheds have a size limit, and Longtime Eddie said something along the lines of, well, I guess it depends on what you think is important, but was thinking, I can be a stickler, too, and if you want to pick on me, I can pick on you by calling in complaints all the time.

Still, as conversations with city inspectors go, the exchange remained polite and the inspector was soon gone. In short order, the Teacher's mother and father rolled in their trash bins, as did the Fast-Food Worker and others until only two cans were to be found maintaining their lonely vigil last week: Longtime Eddie's and his neighbor's across the street.

Longtime Eddie's decision to engage in an act of civil disobedience came as a surprise not only to the neighbors, but also to Eddie himself. "Oh, Eddie," the Teacher's mother tells him, "it's not worth it."

She, the Teacher and the Fed Up neighbor, while not joining him, nonetheless remain in spiritual solidarity as they cannot believe that with everything else going on in the neighborhood, with all the graffiti and loud music and general disorderliness, the city would pick on this.

For his part, Longtime Eddie does not like the thought of getting in trouble with anyone. He understands the law must be enforced and enforced equally. He served his country in the Army, he helped train soldiers for Vietnam though he didn't know it would be Vietnam and he struggled with what exactly he was trying to teach them before summing it up thus: "We are here to teach to you to suffer." (A lesson he draws from these days.)

He does not necessarily share his neighbor's general outrage with city offices. The trash can has not taken on great symbolism in his mind, though if he were given to metaphor, perhaps it would represent a lifetime of grievances perpetrated upon the downtrodden by the powerful, which he is no longer willing to shrug off. No, Longtime Eddie is practical and a trash can is a trash can and in this instance, it is a heck of a way to save a spot in front of his house in case he has company and his driveway is full.

"I'd remove it, but the minute I do, they'll start parking there and they'll park the wrong way and block me in," he says, just the thought making him mad. He shakes his head. "I have to pray over my rage about people parking there."

He says he doesn't know how long he will wage his silent protest. He says if his neighbor across the street pulls hers in, he'll probably do the same. He says if the city tells him, specifically, to stop, well, he probably will.

Later, sitting in his patio chair, taking in the fall afternoon, the light streaming through the trees, the distant sound of shouting children at the nearby elementary school, his mood lightens and he says: "Why am I keeping it out there? Because I'm retired and I don't have anything else to do." He finds this funny and he starts laughing. "Give me five," he says, raising his palm skyward. "What am I doing? I'm instigating a fight."

Ah, he says, before going back inside to his old Westerns on television and his new fancy iron that he bought on sale and the shirt he will press to wear later to the pool hall, "all we can do is live here and wait and see what happens."

griegot@RockyMountainNews.com