So, if individual departments have not maxed out their budgets, their budget gets smaller. To prevent this, departments will review their own budgets before the end of the fiscal year and figure out how to spend all the money they saved over the course of the year (and usually a little more.) A good for instance would be throwing away $90,000 worth of perfectly good tools.
Another ‘recycling’ tale worth the telling is the story of my friend Sam. Sam is a rug dealer from Chechnya who moved to America about forty years ago. He moved into a cheap tenement apartment in Los Angeles and got a labor job. The building he was living in was condemned not long after he moved in but because so many poor people were living there the city allowed that those there could stay for a period of five years but no new tenants would be accepted. This left a lot of apartments empty over time.
Sam had noticed that people in America threw out all kinds of useful things and began picking stuff up on the way home from work each morning. Soon his apartment was full and he asked the manager if he could store things in some of the empty ones. The manager didn’t seem to mind and so over the next few years Sam filled up most of the empty apartments with just about everything you can imagine.
At the end of the five years, the city took action to evict the last 15 residents, giving them one month to leave. Sam ran a publicity campaign saying that he and the rest of the evicted had lived there for years and had no place to put all of their ‘valuable antiques’ and ‘ancient family heirlooms.’ He complained about a city ordinance that forbid garage sales on the street in front of the building. He worked the angle of evicted senior citizens and immigrants.
After lots of pressure from the public who read of the problem in their newspapers and saw stories about it on their local news, the city granted a special permit allowing the citizens of the building to have a special garage sale to sell off their valuables.
Sam told me that for two days he and the other residents nearly continuously carried his accumulated trash downstairs and for ridiculously high prices sold it to the predators that were hoping to prey on the misfortune of these poor people.
It was a three-day permit and at the end of the second day Sam had nearly $200,000 in cash. He got spooked and left the rest of everything to the other residents.
He flew to the Caucus Mountains and bought a huge inventory of beautiful rugs and then returned to America where he sold the rugs and bought a small ranch and an RV with his legitimate profits. He still sells the rugs and he still picks through the garbage despite being a millionaire.
Conversations with Unremarkable Men
George Hush and I got on his bikes (George always keeps a couple of extra bikes around for his guests) and rode down to the industrial beach where I had parked my bus. This is where Aquillo Mallot and the other bums we like hang out.
He was sitting in a tent with a couple of other bums. Aquillo introduced me to Jeff, the older guy whose little tent we sat around as we smoked more ganja. Jeff, it turns out, is the heir apparent to the throne of Wales. True or not, none of us knew, but on the sand or in the streets, you don’t question anyone’s story. For all we knew he could be the King of Sweden.
Aquillo put it another way when he, George, and I moved down the beach. “Everybody is entitled to their fantasy, and what the hell, he could be a fucking alien from the Dog Star.”
George started a fire. It was starting to rain and we set up Aquillo’s dingy as a wind/rain break. Then we just chilled out. Talking.
“The fundamentalist Christian’s told me that peace in Israel would mean the end of the world in 3 ½ years,” I told them.
“It’ll end sooner than that if they keep spraying this chemical shit from these high altitude jets,” Aquillo said, “They’re trying to immunize us, or poison us, or something, but I’ve seen the chem.-trails for three days running now.”
“I hear that Maitreya has been having secret meetings with the United Nations and letting the world leaders know what they need to do to fix the planet, but they won’t listen.” George told us in a conspiratorial whisper about the future Buddha and his hidden agenda. “Maitreya is gonna fuck up the leaders man. He’s the fighting Buddha.”
It’s funny how enjoyable the free things in life are. Sitting on a beach in the rain, having a fire, riding bikes, and talking about anything and everything.
George’s cell phone rang as I recovered in the silence. It was our friend Ursula. Sort of a surreal moment when she found out we were with Aquillo and asked to speak to him. George and me looked at each other with huge shit eating grins as Aquillo Mallot sat on the beach, next to a fire, dog leash in hand, talking to a pretty girl on a cell phone.
Aquillo had never used a cell phone before. George kept whispering and giggling, “Look, Aquillo’s on the cell phone.” She tried to talk him into coming over but Aquillo doesn’t like sitting indoors. We sat on the beach drinking whiskey instead until sleep called us away one by one. I woke up in the morning and was going to leave when I looked in my rear view mirror and saw Aquillo and his dogs coming down the hill. I shut off the bus and waited.
“It’s a good thing you waited,” he told me with a grin “We’re about to smoke a joint.”
Shannon and Hopalong weren’t far behind him. We smoked and fell into our usual patois.
“Here we are, “ I said. “2001. We all survived the bigY2K…no problems.”
They laughed. Shannon shook his head. “ The country is heading into a recession but why should that bother warriors of alternative means?” We all laughed louder.
“2001,” Aquillo roared, “ A homeless oddity.” We all roared with him.
We sat by the fire drinking whiskey, smoking pot, and listening to each other talk pure bullshit.
The Duck. I stopped and talked with the bum who was lying in the grass listening to country music on headphones and complaining about the rain as he smoked a cigarette. He told me a lot of the tramps had been getting their gear stolen. We talked about life on the road and he told me he was going to Phoenix. “Get where it was still warm and didn’t rain.”
I walked all the way through Vancouver to reach the on ramp and this tramp named Duck walked with me part of the way. He complained about the rain and bum’s gear getting ripped off. Curiously, he had a huge bag of stuff he complained about too.
He asked “You drunk?”
It was about 10 AM. “No,” I replied.
“I am. Been tramping a long time. You got any cardboard?” “Just my sign.” I showed him the sign I’d made which simply said "Bellingham."
“Well I gotta get me some so I can fly some cardboard and get me some spending money.” He was dressed all in camouflage.
“I gotta piss… I wouldn’t be a tramp if I couldn’t piss and walk at the same time."
I started walking a bit faster as he slowed down. Suddenly I heard the additional splash of urine on the sidewalk. The Duck didn’t seem to mind that it was daylight or think that the couple walking behind him would mind a little extra precipitation.
I walked about 20 feet ahead of him and tried not to burst out laughing. He kept cussing about the rain and pissing. I turned around once and saw him pissing all over himself. That was the last I saw of The Duck.