The Big Yellow Dumpster
Notebook Recollections
July 5, 2025. 5:25 p.m.
I just returned from outside Carl “Mr. Positive’s” St. Clair home. He is six months gone from the West 7th speck on the old earth ball.
His house is empty. There is a huge boxcar-size dumpster alongside his curb. Bright, canary yellow. Industrial. 10 feet deep, clean, shiney. You would need sunglasses to hold any gaze upon it.
Carl would approve.
And it’s full-to-overflowing with his life-effects. A quick peek over the top revealed a folded, white ironing board and a light blue plastic, upright, vacuum cleaner. Two big, recently rain-soaked red rugs. Three push brooms and one straw kitchen classic.
More inventory to follow.
Then there is Carl‘s always beautiful, putting green, front lawn. It’s gone. Prairie. Three foot high grass.
And an unfortunate human presence. Several 7- Up cans, scattered, blown-in candy wrappers. Three empty red McDonald’s french fry pouches.
His five big beach-ball sized plastic pumpkins are whitening. The front yard table, where he sat most every day nodding to the world passing by, is wobbly and unreliable. It’s green table cloth is frayed, torn. The whole scene is Carl-disgraceful.
A week later, another dumpster peek revealed at least a dozen American car manuals, new gardening tools, several rakes and a scatter of plastic silverware and plates.
Carl’s famous canvas-topped adult tricycle was not in the trash. Friends have it now. It belongs in a museum.
Carl has been described as an angel on earth and a great neighbor to all of West 7th.
He has been known to expertly cut peoples’ grass and snow plow entire alleys. I once followed a one-and-a-half mile snow blown public sidewalk trail
that Carl had launched up to Kowalski’s Grocery. The final half block was only the wheeled trail of his snow blower. He ran out of gas.
There were legendary Carl Halloween stories. Among the top five was the trick-or-treats night that he gave away 120 cans of root beer and two candy bars per kid. He ran out of supplies a half-hour before the end of trick-or-treating that night and gave away food from his refrigerator. The last kid of the evening got a half-full yellow plastic bottle of French’s Mustard.
Carl was a good fellow. A great soul. He was goodness itself. He was embodied compassion.
Hopefully a number of folks got some Carl relics from the yellow dumpster. But so many more will never forget how Carl made them smile or handed them a small plastic glass of ice water on a hot day from his front yard table.
West 7th taxi driver Hall of Famer, William “Texan” Dubois, said Carl was a “one in a million human, the 7th Street Archangel.”
