6A - THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NEWS
THURSDAY,MAY1,2003
Cans
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1A
He doesn't use the money for food because he receives food stamps. Instead, he spends it renting movies, paying for the next month's $8.50 bus pass or for trips to dollar stores.
"Why would I want to go through our nasty, gross garbage?"
"Gives me something to do," he said.
Besides earning spending money, collecting cans passes the time. He's got a lot of that.
Jen LaRue
Minnetonka, Minn., junior
He has a two-hour a week job doing in-home care. Other than that, his daily schedule revolves around collecting cans and getting to the next free
basement breakfast or lunch.
Monday, Wednesday, Friday: lunch at the Salvation Army basement, 946 New Hampshire St.
Tuesday. Friday: breakfast at Jubilee Café in the First United Methodist Church basement, 946 Vermont St.
Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday,
Thursday: lunch at the Lawrence
Interdenominational Nutrition
Kitchen in the First Christian
Church basement, 1000 Kentucky St.
John is a lazy cook. If he's going to make something, it's going to be a sandwich. At the free breakfasts and lunches, he gets a hot meal and the opportunity to catch up with friends.
At Jubilee Café, he always sits with his friends at Table 4 where they whoop and holler. Volunteer servers jokingly call it the "rowdy table" and fight over who gets to take its breakfast orders.
John's friends at Table 4 help him collect cans. Those with vehicles pick him up when he's done collecting and take him and his bags back to his home in East Lawrence. Every couple weeks or so, a friend with a truck or John's case worker takes him to cash in.
John goes collecting alone but would rather have someone tag along.
"Gives me someone to talk to," he said.
Sometimes, one of his Table 4 friends joins him on his route.
"My name is Ray — Raymond Williams," his friend said. "I prefer to be called Ray-dogg, and I've lived in Lawrence for 30 years."
Together, they hunt for cans and cardboard.
"Dumpster-diving, they call it," Ray said.
Ray, 46, and John, 37, are good
Ray Williams passes up glass bottles because he can only earn money for aluminum and cardboard recycling material.
Proposal aims to add outdoor recycling bins
By Jamie Lienemann Special to the Kansan
Students may soon see recycling bins outside campus buildings.
The KU Department of Environmental Stewardship and the KU Design and Construction Management office are designing a proposal to increase the number of recycling bins on campus.
The new bins will look like the multi-use recycling stations already inside 50 cam
Greg Wade, landscape architect, said the proposal included designs and styles that would fit the buildings and landscape along Jayhawk Boulevard.
bus buildings, except they will be made from recycled materials.
Wade said the project would install two recycling bins and a trash receptacle at several locations on campus, including one in front of Snow, Wescoe and Bailey halls and one between Lippincott and Dyche halls.
Victoria Silva, KU Recycling director, said the chancellor and provost have to accept the proposal before anything happens. If the proposal is accepted, changes may not occur until this fall.
Edited by Julie Jantzer
For a more in-depth look at campus recycling, tune into KUJH-TV News tonight.
Ray Williams and Steve Bryant, Lawrence residents, search a Dumpster together. Bryant, 42, gathers about 80 pounds of cans a week and gave his Saturday's findings to Williams because he already had a full bag.
friends, have been for 20 years and always will be, they say.
They may be past the cartoonwatching age, but they act and look even more like Ren and Stimpy. Fart jokes are a popular subject.
In the pair, Ray would be Ren. He's a real smooth talker, yet it's really just a touch of the southern drawl left in him from his 17 years of living in Mississippi. At 46, he describes himself as a dirty old man. He loves the ladies, he says. He has vowed to give up alcohol for a year but talks about drinking all the time, vodka being his drink of choice.
John would be Stimpy. He's an overgrown kid, gentle and jolly.
He jokes with his friends but usually gives in, saying, "Oh, shucks." He sheepishly looks out from his glasses and appears shy, but he warms up to people.
Ray is always one to help. Before sitting down to his own meal at LINK, he makes sure that those in need get their food first. For this, it's easy to be friends with Ray. He's kind, giving and funny and everyone says goodbye to him when he leaves.
Answering a question takes him awhile. He thinks about it, computing the question first and then answering. John has had epilepsy and a mental handicap since birth. He takes medicine daily for his seizures.
Ray looks out for John.
At the time, he was a prepper and dishwasher at Chill's Grill & Bar, 2319 Iowa St., a job he enjoyed. Because Ray wasn't able to work much, Chill's filled his
"I'm his man." Ray says. "I've got to keep him on the right track."
He has more free time to do this since his bicycle accident last October when he broke his collarbone, three ribs and his pelvis. He was riding down a hill and hit a pothole, which caused him to smash into a fire hydrant.
position.
"So I haven't had a job since, except for helping him, but it ain't a job," Ray said, looking at John. "It's just hanging out with him, doing this, that and the other."
Recycling customers
"That's pretty good when you're living down there underneath the bridge, down there in the boonies somewhere," Faler said.
Can collectors can make between $10 and $15 a day, said Lonnie Faler of Lonnie's Recycling, the only Lawrence business that pays for scrap metal.
Not all of Faler's recycling customers are homeless. Ray and John aren't. Faler said customers came in on bicycles and lawn mowers, and some even drove up in a Mercedes.
Students come, too. But Jen LaRue and her roommates from the Ohio Street house probably won't be making it to Lonnie's.
"Why would I want to go through our nasty, gross garbage?" LaRue said.
When LaRue takes the garbage out, she holds it an arm's-length away, plugging her nose.
If she sees someone going through her trash, she gets a little antsy.
"Everyone is judged based on
how they look. I deal with that because I'm blonde, sort of," she said, pointing to her roots.
LaRue was hesitant to call some of the Dumpster divers scary, but Faler said it bluntly.
"There's people that come in here that are plum scary-looking," he said. "I mean wild-looking like they come out from under a rock or something."
Ray and John are just as apprehensive about meeting strangers in the alley.
One day, a young man, probably a student from the University of Kansas, saw them collecting cans in the alley. He told them of a whole sack of cans on his back porch a few blocks away.
They didn't go there. John has a defined path through the alleys of Tennessee and Kentucky streets that he's mapped out. He sticks to it and doesn't stray much. Strangers make him nervous.
"You never know if they going to be nice to you," he says. "You don't know."
On the route
It's a Friday afternoon, a little humid. Ray and John have already made it to Jubilee Café breakfast and LINK lunch. They're going collecting.
Standing tiptoe, John strains his thick neck and looks inside.
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Join your fellow citizens of Lawrence for a night of networking,educating,working together,fun and food'
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What: Balloons, face painting, games (for both kids and adults), food served by Food Not Bombs, and great musical performances. There will be speakers from Acting for Economic Justice, Industrial Workers of the World, Lawrence Anarchist Black Cross, Graduate Teaching Assistants Coalition, KAPE/AFT local 4565.and more. Various Lawrence organizations to have tables set up, including KU Greens, Latin American Solidarity, KAW Valley Greens, Lawrence Anarchist Black Cross, Lawrence Coalition of Peace and Justice, Animal Outreach of Kansas City, Queers & Allies, Woman's Empowerment Action Coalition, Free Thrift Collective, Medusa Poetry Group, Men Can Stop Rape, Women Transitional Care Services, and Douglas County AIDS Project. STUDENT
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