Life of Brian

By Don Riepe

If you travel along Cross Bay Blvd., you must have seen him, a lean, gray-haired man hunched over and pushing a grocery cart laden with hundreds of returnable bottles. Each week, in all seasons and weather, he travels from Rockaway to a Jamaica Avenue venue where he unloads the bottles and cans for deposit money. It’s a five-mile one way trip. Talk about a work ethic!

Whenever I see him, I’ll stop and chat for a few minutes and give him a few dollars to help supplement his hard-earned income. He told me he originally came from Oklahoma and somehow ended up in Gotham. I didn’t want to press him too much on how he ended up with this job, but we talked about various other topics, and I think he enjoyed the human contact. The next time you’re walking along Cross Bay and you see Brian, say hi – after all he’s doing a great job of recycling for us!