Earth Day and a Gypsy King

The tree kit campaign had more than exhausted our financial resources, as well as our tiny staff of volunteers. However, after witnessing its success, everyone at Trees for Life was flush with enthusiasm and felt the need to celebrate Earth Day with an event to let our presence be known in the community.

Though the green movement had been around since the 1970s, 1990 was the first year Earth Day had become a public event. The corporate world was eager to find a place to get involved. We were delighted when the largest grocery store chain in the state, the telephone company, an international soft drink company, and half a dozen other businesses in town joined us. We requested their public relations and advertising people design this event. 

Since we had the best minds pooled together, I delegated the process to them. The theme of Earth Day that year was on recycling, so they decided to put out a call to the citizens of Wichita to drop their empty aluminum cans at a central place. The proceeds from the sale of the collected cans would go to help fund Trees for Life. Some of the sponsors would provide publicity through their own channels.

I was livid when I heard this. 

“You won’t have any cans!” I said to David Kimble, Trees for Life’s Executive Director. “People don’t do that sort of thing today!” 

I could not understand how an eminent group of advertising people did not realize such an event would be a fiasco. My experience had taught me that while people might come to attend an entertainment event, they would not come to drop empty cans. We were now in the age of communications. Before the communications revolution, people went to events. Now the events came to their living rooms on television. Getting people to travel somewhere to drop empty cans would not happen.

But I did not wish to go back to this team and tell them that. Thus, I was looking forward to a big egg on our organization’s face. 

The telephone company erected a huge wire cage near downtown. Sponsoring businesses paid for billboards and advertising. A large stage was set up near the can-collection point. Everything was done. A day before the event, there were just a few dozen empty cans in the cage, dropped by an elderly gentleman. I was perhaps the gloomiest person on this planet. 

Then the phone rang. It was 10 am. 

The man on the other end of the line told me his name and that he owned a can recycling company in Wichita. “You guys are doing something with cans on Earth Day, and I would like to be a part of it,” he said. 

I listened listlessly because I expected him to offer to buy the cans from us, and we had no cans. For me, the negative was starting to manifest itself even before the event. 

“I am also the king of the Gypsies in Wichita,” he said. “We Gypsies don’t get any respect. I want to show that we are a caring people. Would you allow me to participate in the event?” 

I was stunned. “When can we meet?” I asked.

“I’ll come over right now,” he replied.

Dressed in a well-fitted suit, a short, dapper man walked into our office. This man, in his fifties, took off his hat as he entered the room and greeted me. A familiar vibration went through my body. I could tell he, too, felt something. We became instantaneous friends, as if we had known each other all our lives. I wasted no time in sharing my misery with him and we cooked up a plan. 

I asked if he would be willing to put a trailer load of his cans in the cage.

“The cans belong to you and they will be returned to you in 24 hours,” I said.

“Yes! I will do that tonight!” he assured me. “I better get busy, time is short.”

He left within 15 minutes of his arrival, with the assurance that the secret would remain with him. That night I tossed and turned in my bed, doubts creeping into my mind: He is a stranger, and I have no idea if he is for real or not. Does he really own a can recycling company? Will he fulfill his promise? Will I ever see him again? 

Before sunrise, I drove to the site, praying for a miracle but bracing myself for disappointment. I shook my head with disbelief and smiled at what I saw. The wire cage was filled to the brim with tens of thousands of empty aluminum cans. 

I went back home, had my breakfast and read the newspaper, as if I didn’t have a care in the world. 

Later that day, several hundred people showed up for the event. It turned out to be the only Earth Day event in Wichita. Volunteers were guiding the traffic. Speeches were made, songs were sung, a big globe balloon was sent aloft. The president of the telephone company came from Dallas. He and one of our Kansas congressmen were hoisted high in a cherry picker to empty into the cage a large sack of cans collected at the telephone company. The PR people who had designed the event were delighted with the success of their plan and its perfect execution. My friends told me I had worried for nothing, that everything had a way of working out. 

Indeed.