I’d seen him walking his old, yellow dog along the main road near his trailer. When the dog died, Two-W replaced it with a stuffed, toy dog he seat-belted into the passenger side of his pickup. “My dog is a good dog,” he’d say each week at the dump, handing treats to Crabby and Sweetie, my dogs, and grinning slyly, like he’d figured out a way to keep a dog without licensing, feeding, or walking it.
These
days more and more people in our town are flatlanders from the other side of
the White Mountains. They commute on weekends to big houses with
big property taxes. Their taxes help
support the dump, which used to be just a hole in a sand pit before it was
upgraded to a transfer station. When
flatlanders hauled their trash there on Saturdays, Two-W helped them unload,
and he educated them about local politics.
Soon
enough, though, the dump got citified with several buildings, piles of
recyclables, and a fence to keep out people without dump stickers, issued only
to taxpayers. Two-W got transferred to unemployment. He was so busy educating flatlanders, he’d
forget to check who had stickers and who didn’t. Two-W’s replacement pays attention to dump
stickers, and he goes through the other motions, handing Crabby and Sweetie
their treats, but he’s no Two-W. Even
Sweetie backs off.
Picking
up my new dump sticker at the town office last week, I ran into Two-W doing the
same.
He
told me he’s been cleaning a restaurant one town over. The chef, a flatlander from Massachusetts, likes his work. Two-W points to the good dog in his
pickup. It’s wearing a new bandana
around its neck, and on my way home I notice Two-W’s trailer-yard is filled
with more new stuff—rows of American flags, an arbor with built-in Christmas
lights, and plastic flowers stuck along the side of the road. Turns out the chef has been drawing enough business to open a
second eatery he wants Two-W to clean, too, meaning more income for Two-W, who
can now earn plenty of spending money just one town away.
Maybe
some flatlanders want to make The Great North Woods more like where they came
from, but some of them figure out what it takes to get along here and then work
at it, helping the rest of us along the way.
I’m taking Crabby and Sweetie along for the ride when I go check out
that new restaurant one town over.