Picking up cans was how a kid growing up in Iowa made money. Each can or bottle yielded a cool 5 cents, so an afternoon at the creek could make you 50 cents - especially if you came after the teenagers left. Teenagers. And mind you, this wasn't saving money, this was spending money. This was spend it all on food guaranteed to rot your teeth money. 7-11 was my store of choice when I was 10 years old. Never mind that it was the only store I could safely ride to on my bike, I just knew it as the only place to get an icy cold slurpee on a hot and humid day. On other days it would take a while to decide which flavor of Hubba Bubba to choose, oh the many possibilities. Grape. I always chose grape.
The allure of free money has never diminished for me, I'm the lady with the coupons you grumble about when standing in line at the grocery store. Moving to Michigan only made it easier. Because get this, they pay 10 cents here for cans and bottles. 10 cents. I know. And so I continued to pick up cans. It was never very often. And I only pulled over in heavy traffic once. OK, I've done that more than once. I knew I'd gone too far when I started doing the math. If I picked up ten cans a day, every day for a year that would be 365 dollars!
But then I saw him. And I stopped. He rode his bike unsteadily down the sidewalk as if the bags that hung from the handle bars were unevenly weighted. His shoulders were stooped and he looked at the ground as he rode. He pulled over into the car wash were I was vacuuming the car and began to go through the trash, pulling out cans I had contemplated collecting only moments before. He added the bottles to his already heavily laden bike and slowly rode away. There was a man that needed 10 cents more than I did.
Jim Sawicki was a reminder to our suburban town that homelessness exists. There aren't very many reminders between lunch at Panera and dropping the kids off at soccer practice. I met him once. We were both headed into the store to return bottles. I asked if he would like mine also. He reached a dirty gloved hand over and took the bag I had extended to him. He didn't say a word, didn't look me in the face, just turned and continued into the store. I noticed him a lot more after that. I hoped he was warm in the winter and noticed he still wore a coat in the summer. I didn't pick up the cans on the side of the road anymore. When I saw that cans had been picked up, I hoped it was because he had found them.
I know his name because he was killed last month. A 20 year old driver with a history of traffic and alcohol related violations, didn't see him as she reached for her phone. The local news showed a picture of his bike, the bags of bottles still hanging from the handlebars. It was oddly startling to read the newspaper and discover he had a name. Homelessness had a face, but never a name.
Picking up cans is how a homeless man in Michigan made his money. There is a certain sadness now when I see an empty can, they are a reminder that a familiar hometown character is gone. His family set up a fund at a local bank to pay for his funeral. 10 cents a bottle still adds up. Ten bottles a day, every day for a year equals 365 dollars. Here's to Jim Sawicki.
