In Vermont, you can bring your beer and soda cans and bottles back to the store and get a nickel for each. The deposit law doesn’t cover juice, wine or bottled water, only carbonated beverages. Seems odd, but there it is.

Adrienne and I don’t drink many carbonated beverages, so when we have two or three, we put them out to the curb with our other recycling. Apparently, many people do the same because the night before recyclables are picked up (Sunday evenings in our neighborhood), the “bottle guys” come down the street scrounging through the bins for cans and bottles to redeem for nickels. You can hear the muttering tinkle of cans and bottles against the grill of their shopping carts. The bottle guys usually have the worn-down appearance of those who’ve lived years without a lucky break.

A few weeks ago, I noticed a mid-90s Toyota Camry cruising the neighborhood on Sunday evening. A woman in her mid-30s got out and began rifling the recycling bins. Finding a few returnables, she drew a plastic bag from her pocket and put them inside. As she worked her way up the block I could see a man of similar age driving the Camry slowly beside her with a little girl in the back seat. The woman stowed the full bag in the trunk, pulled out a fresh bag and turned the corner, the Toyota still following.

The woman and man’s clothes and car identified them as being from the same class as Adrienne and I, but they were picking through our refuse and I was sitting on the porch. “Something must have happened to them,” I thought.

Something is happening next month to the 100 people who work in the bristle factory at the end of my street. It’s closing after 140 years of operation. The company that bought the company that once owned the factory is shutting operations in the face of competition from overseas, China, particularly. In March, a factory in Winooski, the next town over, shut with a loss of 125 jobs.

Next month is also when Vermont Transit bus line (their depot is just down the street from the soon-to-be-defunct bristle factory) will end its service to Albany and will reduce the number of stops on some of its other runs, like the run to Boston. Managers say the price of gas is forcing the changes; people – poor people – who rely on bus service for inter-city transportation now have fewer options.

The housing market in Burlington has been tight for years – until a few weeks ago. Suddenly signs are sprouting all over the neighborhood as people – many of them older people – sense the market beginning to decline and try to cash in the appreciated value of their homes while they still can. You can almost hear the air escaping as the housing bubble deflates.

Our neighborhood has a list-serve; people post notices of baseball leagues, yard sales and items lost and found. It seems lately that I’m seeing more and more items from people seeking odd jobs or providing childcare.

Something must have happened, must still be happening, in our neighborhood. The price of gas is over $2.50 a gallon, which means that family in the Toyota will have to pick up 50 some-odd bottles and cans just to pay for the gas they’ll use while out collecting, but what else can they do? They don’t want to leave their little girl alone while they’re out getting bottles. I suppose one parent could stay home and the other could go out with a shopping cart, but they probably don’t want to go that route just yet. If they can just keep using the car, they can tell themselves this is just temporary, that it won’t become a way of life.

I pondered all these signs in my neighborhood earlier this week while I was flying on an airplane at someone else’s expense. Changing planes in Newark, I bought a cup of coffee at the food court. The woman at the cash register had a five-year-old boy by her side. She brings him to work because she can’t afford childcare. Something must have happened and it’s not just on my block.

© Mark Floegel, 2005