Can Man

The street in front of my house is busy for the narrow throughway that it is. We get a, like, smorgasboard sampler of street noise, mostly people who believe that one's car ought to be very noisy via music and no muffler, or people walking up and down, or kids playing very involved games that have something to do with the speed of a plastic trike coming along the sidewalk in one direction and someone else running in the other direction at the same time and everyone shouting.

But a constant, and by now familiar, sound is the can-crusher man.

He lives directly across the street and comes to stand on the sidewalk with the same regularity that wooden birds in swiss clocks display. He has a plastic bag of pop cans and he puts them on the sidewalk and rrrrreet, squishes them with his foot, one by one. There's a permanent wet stain on his sidewalk spot from leftover bits of drinks in the can.

rrrrreet ... rrrrreennt ... rrrrnt

That's what the afternoons sound like around here.

Once a can is squished it goes into a seperate bag. Once all the cans are squished, he recedes back behind the palms.