A definition from Wikipedia:
Debridement is a medical term referring to the removal of dead, damaged, or infected tissue to improve the healing potential of the remaining healthy tissue. Removal may be surgical, mechanical, chemical, autolytic (self-digestion), and by maggot therapy, where certain species of live maggots selectively eat only necrotic tissue.
 In the above definition, replace dead, damaged or infected tissue with the debris, piles of sticks, stumps, limbs and broken fences that have been littering everyone’s front yards since Hurricane Ike, and it is a fairly appropriate pun. Debris-dement. Fun, especially the part about maggot therapy. |
  The contractors that the City of Houston has hired to remove the debris from the streets finally made it to our neighborhood. They came with curious little front-loaders that would scoop up a pile of debris and place it in the big dumpster truck. When that truck was full, they would wait for another truck to come by and start filling that one. It was actually pretty neat to watch. I don’t know if that’s just because I was bored at the time, or if it’s because they seemed to be able to pick up a big pile of trash without taking out the grass, a tree, the lamp post or any of the parked cars nearby. |
 We had raked and bagged most of our small debris. The stuff that was too big to bag, we cut and stacked at the end of our driveway. I know the picture looks like a pile of leaves, but it’s actually mostly branches. We just cut it all down first so it would fit on the driveway. Katie was determined not to kill the grass after we (she) worked so hard to get it looking nice again. While the cleanup crew was working on the street in front of the house, I asked one of them if they would please pick up the pile on our driveway (they had ignored it previously). The guy agreed, provided that I remove the piece of wood that was on the pile of broken tree limbs. That piece of wood was a 30 inch long by 1 1/2 inch wide piece of scrap that I had cut off of a door. That’s right, they wouldn’t take the pile of wood until I removed the piece of wood from the top of the pile of wood and threw it in the garbage. I even pointed out that it was just a piece of scrap wood. “We’re not taking that kind of wood,” said the king of lawn debris. ”Only tree limbs.” Apparently they didn’t have the right kind of bulldozer for that kind of wood. |
 Of course, I was out taking pictures thinking, “Everyone who reads our blog will want to see pictures of this big scary thing playing pick-up-sticks on our driveway.” About that time, the same guy who made me remove the piece of wood from my woodpile started shouting at me from across the street that I wasn’t allowed to take pictures. I thought about pointing out that I (standing on MY property) could take a picture of anyone and anything on the street in front of my house, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. However, since I was REALLY wanting his crew to remove the temporary barricade Katie and I made at the end of our driveway (and because his buddies had equipment that could destroy our house) I decided not to try to win that argument. |
| Instead, I did what any decent person would do. I politely waved, put the lens cap on my camera, put it over my shoulder, walked into the garage, made sure I was out of site of his magesty, then took another picture of the scary scoop monster as it picked up our driveway debris and carried it away.
The neighborhood looks a lot nicer now. Most of the big tree debris has been hauled off. A lot of fences (including ours) still need to be repaired or replaced. That will be our next big project. |
{ 3 } Comments
Wonderfully narrated. Great story when I first heard it; now memorialized for all time!
I don’t get it – why would they not want you to take pictures? Is there some secret formula to the cleanup process that they’re worried about people stealing?
One person speculated that they don’t want any evidence in case they destroy something. That could be. Some folks are paranoid.
Another thought is that my camera will steal their soul if I take their photos. Of course, that’s just ridiculous, because I have a UV filter on my camera, and that blocks souls from being captured. Duh.
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