Brokenhearted in Bakersfield
9 - GARBAGE IN / GARBAGE OUT
About twenty years ago a newly
arrived immigrant named Papa Pronto showed up in Bakersfield with a pickup
truck, a pretty wife and a passel of kids.
He had a lot of cash, so people understood not to ask too many
questions.
Papa Pronto offered Jake Farque a large sum of money for a 99-year lease on
Bottomless Gorge, which was nothing but a big hole in the ground about a mile
down the road from Broken Heart Park.
(Due to mysterious bad luck Jake disappeared before he ever collected
his first payment.)
Papa promptly set himself up in a business collecting garbage which he then
dumped over the edge of Bottomless Gorge.
It was common knowledge people had been throwing crap down Bottomless
Gorge for years, so it was considered a grand luxury to have someone come pick up
your crap for you.
Papa’s waste extraction and removal business grew into an unregulated
empire. Let’s say you had yourself an
old metal trunk stuffed with unwanted meat products that you had padlocked and
taped up real good. You could arrange
for Papa to come over, even under the cover of darkness, and for a modest fee
he would discretely remove that offending trunk from your premises. Why, he’d even hose the blood off your
driveway. With a nose for business like
that it wasn’t no time at all before his pickup was replaced by a genuine
garbage truck, and then the garbage truck turned into a bunch of garbage
trucks, and then the garbage trucks turned into a fleet of garbage trucks to
handle all the pent-up demand. There was
even talk about some Prontos from New Jersey joining in the family business.
After nearly twenty years of successful dumping, it became apparent that
Bottomless Gorge had been misnamed. The
big hole in the ground was now plugged with unwanted waste products. So, ever the admirable entrepreneur and
resourceful businessman, Papa did what he had to do. He and his sons rolled a layer of turf over
the landfill and put up a billboard announcing a new property site available
for commercial real estate development.
While their business gamble was playing out, Papa Pronto also decided to
reapply his energies in the backyard of the family’s bungalow by starting The
Recycling King. This was a place of
business where the many fine citizens of Bakersfield could pick up a little
extra cash for turning in their recyclables.
(There was once a rumor circulating that Papa Pronto and his sons would
even hijack beer trucks just for the aluminum cans. Well now, I’ve spent more than a few nights
roaming the back roads looking for pools of discarded beer until finally
admitting it was only an urban legend.)
The Recycling King’s business operations kept the Prontos afloat financially
while Papa attempted to sell his lease on the former Bottomless Gorge. It appeared the Pronto family was going to
achieve a whole new level of success in their rags-to-greater-riches story. That is, until the law showed up pounding on
the doors. Unbeknownst to Papa, his
youngest son had started a side business after noticing how many fine old
trunks was given up for scrap, and how Papa was discarding these possibly
valuable commodities by burying them far out in the desert. Papa’s son got the idea of going out into the
desert and digging up a few dozen of these old metal trunks and passing them
off as antiques. Unfortunately, it never
occurred to him to empty out any of the spoiled contents before he tried to
pass one off as a collectible to an undercover cop posing as a scout for the TV
show “Grifter’s Garage Sale.”
As a result of this oversight, Papa Pronto and his sons disappeared from
Bakersfield so quick the local authorities was unable to make further
inquiries into their recycling enterprise.
Scattered to the winds, Papa and his sons left Mama behind to run The
Recycling King. Mama Pronto
turned out to have a nose for trash, just like Papa, and today she’s one of the
most successful and respected businesswomen in all of Kern County.