Teddy the Trash Gypsy

During the summer of 2003, I lived in the small Iowa town where I attended college. While I imagine there will be a stream of posts about what I like to refer to as the"Failed at Life" period of my existence thus far, I would first like to highlight one of the characters in the tragedy that was my life that summer: Teddy the Trash Gypsy.

I believe the first time I laid eyes on Teddy was at Rabbitt's, where Jenn tended bar that summer. Between her tavern wenching and my cash register operating at the corner grocery store, we would grow to know the majority of the personalities that haunted the streets of Grinnell, IA, far outside the liberal arts-centered realm we lived in during the school year.

Actually, that is a lie. The first time I ever saw Teddy was on High Street, an eyesore of slum houses populated by college students and the center of my universe that summer of 2003. While my friends had jobs in the science department at the college chopping up rat brains or playing with C. Elegans, I spent the majority of my time selling Diet Mountain Dew to tweakers and wine and cheese to college professors.

ANYWAY, at the end of the school year, students load all of their random crap that has accumulated over the year on the sidewalks for the trash company to come and collect. This, of course, is a hey day for Teddy the Trash Gypsy. He's a trash gypsy, so he comes and weeds through all of the leftover stuff. After all, one person's trash is another person's treasure. I would understand him doing this if he was strapped for cash. However, Teddy lived in a nice house just a few blocks away. I would later discover Teddy made his personal fortune from dealing meth. But the real question is what he did with all of the leftover junk he collected.

I think that this is an appropriate time to now mention that Teddy the Trash Gypsy is perhaps the scariest looking man I have ever seen. He stood about 6'0",was fairly thin, and walked with a minor limp. He had a crazy, curly, snow white mullet with matching white handle bar mustache and a couple of rings in his ears. I estimate his age to be between 40 and 50, but I don't think anyone really knew how old he actually was. He looked like he was straight from an episode of COPS. He even drove a rusty old AstroStar, filled to the brim with old white Hanes t-shirts and rusty beer cans.

I would observe Teddy for the rest of the summer from afar, mostly because he scared me so much I could barely make eye contact with him. But he knew everyone in town. EVERYONE. Whether he was on a marathon shopping trip at the grocery store (I would always take a convenient break if I thought there was any chance of him approaching my aisle) or selling illegal substances at the local grog shop, I determined by the end of the summer that Teddy pretty much ran that town. His son, who was 19 at the time, had been drinking underage at the bar for years. He popped up everywhere, like in some sort of nightmare. That being said, he always stayed in town where he belonged, and I figured I would see less of him once the school year began and I moved back on campus.

WRONG. One spring morning my senior year of college when I was leaving the bathroom in my dorm, I looked to my right, and there stood Teddy, lurking in a corner staring at me. My worlds had converged. No one else was in the hall. As if he had heard me gossiping about him and had come to take me to meet my maker. All I could think about for that brief moment was that he was going to cut me up into pieces and store my remains in the shed behind his house. I mean, no one would find me there. It's not like anyone had guts to go anywhere within a 100 foot radius of his house. Also, how had he entered the dorms?! We were under 24 hours lockdown, and one needed an electronic card to enter.

I fled to my room, locked the door, waited for a bit, looked out the peep hole until he disappeared, and fled upstairs to my friend Ellen's room to inform her of what had just happened.

S: "Ellen, Teddy the Trash Gypsy is IN OUR DORM."
E: "Wait, what exactly does he look like?"
S: "Um, huge curly white mullet. Moustache. That is all you need to know."
E: "Ohmygod. I let him in. I thought he was a janitor or something."

That's right, my BFF Ellen, had let a murderer into our dorm on her OWN WILL. What sort of person lets a man with HIS APPEARANCE into a locked dorm full of college students?! Oh that's right, Ellen. Of course. She could have been the one to be blamed for my death at such an innocent, young age and I would have never been able to download all those John Tesh church cuts on her Ipod. Because I would be chopped up.

Luckily, it turns out, Teddy had not come to take me away and avenge my loud mouth, but most likely to hustle meth to one of the cleaning ladies and I was able to go about my business carefree for the rest of the semester. Moral of the story: Teddy was frightening and never trust Ellen with your personal safety.