Four hard-working bachelor types were the only customers at Greer’s on Dorset Street in South Burlington on Sunday morning – bright and early around 7 a.m.. Asked one of them to snap a picture of yours truly doing his duty, folding.
Mike, it turned out, is a regular early riser. He’s been driving a garbage truck for nine years. The 50-year-old native-Californian came to Burlington 20 years ago. Yep, a Vermont woman he met out there, one he’s no longer with.
Did kitchen work in a few area restaurants before the trash-hauling. Hard-working guy with a strict work ethic, as they say, and doesn’t have a whole lot of respect for those who do not have jobs. In Mike’s view, there’s work out there and anyone who really wants a job can find one even if it means working in a fast-food restaurant.
Of course, he told me that he’s paying $90-a-week out of his paycheck for his share of his health insurance premiums. Rather than complain about the cost, he’s just glad to have coverage.
The notion that health care was a “right of citizenship” drew a confused look.
Yes, I recommended he see Sicko.
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