It is another delightful day, warm in the mid 50’s. The blue sky is striking. The sun is bright. I stood outside on the deck for a while. The dogs were running in the yard. Nala took the lead. I noticed how much trash was in the yard and decided to take my prisoner stick and clean up. I picked up all sorts of trash, compliments of Nala. She had one bread wrapper in her mouth and teased me with it. I filled a bag with trash.

When I was a kid, I remember the trash truck. It was loud. Two trash men hung off the back holding on to their barrels, big plastic, filthy barrels with one hand while holding on to the truck with the other. They’d fill the barrels with trash from the sidewalk barrels then empty the trash into the back of the truck. From the top of the back a presser would slowly drop to the trash and crush it. That was my favorite part.

Yesterday I went to the dump. When I was pressing down the trash in a bag before I left, I slashed my finger, a thumb, on what I figured was the lid from a can. It bled a lot.

My mother colored better than any of us. She could shade the colors so that one crayon was many colors. I was a bit jealous. My colors were always bright, never muted. I got new boxes of crayons every Christmas and most Easters. The number of crayons varied. One box even had a crayon tip sharpener. It looked a lot like a pencil sharpener. We almost never threw a crayon away. The pieces went into a cigar box. The problem was we ripped off the color descriptions when we sharpened. The nuances disappeared. Brick red was just red. Burnt orange was just orange.

I have some boxes I never opened. They are special boxes. One is the last box with some colors soon to be discontinued. Another is a Crayola anniversary box. The last box my mother put in my Christmas stocking has 96 colors and a sharpener. I still have it. Last Christmas my sister gave me a coloring book and crayons. The title of the coloring book is My Coloring Book, Ghana. It has cute animals, African masks, a map of Ghana divided into regions and the Ghanaian flag. On the opposite side of the drawing is place to write the date of completion. On the back cover it says, “For children under 8.”

This entry was posted on April 27, 2026 at 12:14 pm and is filed under Musings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.