{"id":541,"date":"2005-12-15T10:27:05","date_gmt":"2005-12-15T18:27:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2005\/12\/the_sanitation_mans_special.html"},"modified":"2008-01-25T12:46:32","modified_gmt":"2008-01-25T17:46:32","slug":"the_sanitation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/12\/the_sanitation.html","title":{"rendered":"The Sanitation Man’s Special"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Press’ C.J. Sullivan trails the King of Mongo<\/a>, a 52-year-old gin-swilling Department of Sanitation employee. Even if half of what the King says is complete trash, it’s great:<\/p>\n

The King of Mongo is on his first coffee break. He leans against the brick wall of a Queens apartment building, sipping a cup of coffee laced with a shot of Gordon’s Gin. The alcohol helps with the early morning aches and pains that come from 25 years as a New York City garbage man.<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

“When you need money you pray for snow. I have gone to church and asked God for a blizzard. A big snow hits and until it is cleared all we do is snow removal. No garbage collection. At first it is like a vacation. Then the hours become endless, and mandatory. You have to do 12-hour shifts seven days a week until the snow is removed. This is a big city. The overtime is so much that at the end you almost regret asking for the snow. It is back-breaking, but then the big ass check comes\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand it is all forgotten and your prayers are answered.”<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

“Eight million slobs is what this city got. I’ve worked everywhere and the whole place is a mess. No one thinks about their garbage. They put it out into cans and like magic it gets taken away. That’s what we are. We’re fuckin’ magicians,” the King says.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Praying for snow (apostate!) — fine. I’m not so sure how I feel about on-the-job gin swilling, but whatever. But other parts of his story seem to stretch credulity:<\/p>\n

Mostly, though, he seems to miss the old days: “This job has changed. Can’t get away with what you used to. What surprised me when I first started was how quick I got over the stink of garbage. The first couple of days I almost threw up from the smells and then it just went away and I loved the job. Back then I was single and working the Bronx in the Hunts Point section. We would pull up to the hookers and get the Sanitation Man’s Special. You know what that is?” I tell him I don’t.<\/p>\n

“A $5 blow job. I guess they took pity on us when traffic was slow for them. We had three men on the truck back then. They changed that after I was on the job a few years. Now it’s all two-men trucks.<\/p>\n

“When we had three men we’d get our route done as fast as we could and we were free. I mean we couldn’t go home but we’d roam the neighborhood. The driver always got to choose the hooker and get off first. That was our rule. Back then I tried to do a lot of driving. Didn’t really care for sloppy seconds, know what I mean.” The King lowers his voice as his young partner hops into the cab of the truck.<\/p>\n

“That kid never saw the things I did. He’s a newbie. I only work with the new guys now because I work slow and steady and the vets all want to rush though the route. I take my time and the other guys just want to do their job and go back to the garage and rest.<\/p>\n

“Maybe for the kid it is for the better. We did some foul shit when I was a young San Man. So back to the hookers — when I was young the driver got his load off first and then the other two guys would choose who would go next. I loved when I worked with married guys who didn’t want to do it — although believe me there were enough married guys getting it too.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Press’ C.J. Sullivan trails the King of Mongo, a 52-year-old gin-swilling Department of Sanitation employee. Even if half of what the King says is complete trash, it’s great: The King of Mongo is on his first coffee break. He leans against the brick wall of a Queens apartment building, sipping a cup […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture_infrastructure","category-culturalanthropological"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}