January 20, 2000

A couple of days ago I saw the strangest thing. There was a guy sitting on the edge of the road. He certainly appeared to be homeless. But the really unique thing about him was how he was carrying his belongings. He has a dolly with a plastic trash can attached to it. He had a couple of straps to secure the trash can to the dolly. He had another "pack" attached to the trash can. And there were a couple of other attachments. But the most amazing thing was the handle. The handle was really long. It was attached at the bottom of the dolly and ran up to the top and then extended about three feet out. At that point there was a 30 degree bend in the handle and then it extended another two feet. This allowed the part of the handle he was pulling on to be parallel to the ground while the dolly was tilted at such an angle so as to be well balanced. It was the neatest thing I have ever seen. I just sat there and stared. Not at him so much as at his contraption. I was just totally amazed. I was wondering how someone who had enough creativeness to come up with such a design could end up homeless. And his whole rig was basically clean. It wasn't a used, nasty trash can.

I guess it's just a sign of our times. So much for the hobo with a stick and red scarf.