Sounded Good at the Time...

First, the residents of Raleigh were forced into a physical fitness program called trash cart hauling, after the city abandoned the practice of having trash collectors pick up trash from residents’ backyards. Now, the pace is being quickened. Residents will have to double-time it to the curb and back. No stopping to catch their breath. Before sunset the day after collection, they have to haul the cart to the backyard. Hup! Hup! If not, the Raleigh police (motto: “We need more silly laws to enforce – yeah, right!”) will issue a “ticket.” Three of those and you’re in the hole for a whopping fifty bucks. There goes dinner out with your sweetie.

Solution for homeowners: Hire-a-hauler – a program where you can hire your neighbor’s kid to haul your trash cart up to the backyard when he/she gets home from school, which is usually before sunset (don’t hire one that is in an after-school sports program, though). Or, for you technophiles, Inventaholics Anonymous founder Henry “Just call me Jake” Harris introduces “Robocart” – a truly high-tech cart that automatically rolls itself out to the curb by 6:00 a.m. on trash day and back up to your house before sunset the next day. Of course, the prototype had a minor flaw – a robotic arm designed to take the trash out of the cart and put it into the trash truck. But the arm kept grabbing the trash collectors instead. Don’t worry, “Just call me Jake” will have the kinks worked out soon.

And for the overworked and underpaid Raleigh police force, there’s “InstaTicket,” a tamper-proof device with a timer/light sensor combo that, when installed on trash carts, functions similarly to parking meters, except this one will automatically pop out a ticket if the cart isn’t rolled back up to the house before the second sunset after trash is collected. (Since the time that sunset occurs varies every day, a model using just a timer had to be scrapped.) Of course, homeowners could always install floodlights in their yard to fake out the sensor – not to mention keeping the neighborhood well-lit, neighbors awake, and their electric bill equal to the state budget deficit. But, hey, it’s worth saving that fifty bucks to take your sweetie out to dinner.

Maybe next time the Raleigh City Council has a gap in its agenda, they can consider a few other earth-shattering issues, such as: How many more times to open, then close, then open the downtown area to traffic; where to post more signs on the beltway to “clarify” which way people are traveling; and how to make parking for the next State Fair even more inconvenient and confusing.

Don’t be surprised if we see a new competition at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China: Trash cart hauling, part of the track and field events. Can you imagine winning that gold medal?

Copyright © 2005 A.C. Cargill