Cheney garbageman a community fixture

CHENEY – Slimy dregs of beer bottles, pizza boxes and rotting newspapers rattle inside of Jackson T. Kile’s garbage truck. His stalwart face rarely changes as he methodically empties trash cans along his route one foggy December morning. He seems like your average garbageman.

Then he pulls up to an elderly woman’s house and goes all the way up the porch for her trash. A grayed head appears in the window.

“He’s willing to come up to my door. I’ve had two hip replacements this year,” Kate McCulloch yells down. “He’s a very exceptional man. You won’t find another one like him.”

So they say.

Kile has hefted and hauled most of Cheney’s garbage for 37 years, garnering the respect of hundreds of longtime residents. Famous for going out of his way to get people’s trash, the 57-year-old won the national driver of the year award in 1998. Serving almost every home in Cheney, about 2,300, Kile’s face is known at many doors.

“When he’s on vacation, people panic,” said David Harelson as Kile tosses his trash into the truck’s scoop. Kile has disposed of Harelson’s trash for 30 years.

“He’s really, really highly respected in this town,” Harelson said, noting Kile sometimes mows lawns for free.

People, particularly the elderly, emerge from their homes to chat as Kile stops and starts his truck down their street.

“I pretty much know who can get out and who can’t get out. I know the names of their dogs, their grandchildren,” Kile said. “It’s important to me. Someday that’s going to be me.”

Kile talks slowly and simply. He doesn’t rush to glow in his popularity, instead going into detail about the greatness of his company, Sunshine Disposal, city officials, his children and young people he thinks will “make something of themelves.” All this as he manhandles heavy cans up and down the street.

For more than three decades, he’s worked full time in continual physical motion, collecting the trash in snowstorms, high winds, summer heat (which really makes the garbage stink), and once on a broken foot.

Collections clerk Karen Gemmell said when people call for missed garbage pickup, half the time they’re more concerned about Kile. Only two people in Kile’s line of 2,300 homes have formally requested their garbage to be picked up near the house; all the rest get their service out of Kile’s generosity.

“My shoulders and stuff are worn out, but as long as the doctors say I can keep working, I’ll keep working,” Kile said, staring out at a long row of dirty cans.

“I just do this nonchalantly. I do it automatically.”

Kile grew up in McCall, Idaho, and married his wife of 35 years, Jeanie, when he was 22. He was 20 when he first began collecting trash in the early 1970s.

When he recieved the national award in 1998, the Environmental Industry Association flew him to Chicago for a convention and gave him a $1,000 savings bond. People from all over the community congratulated Kile, and his wife preserved the newspaper clipping.

“I won’t forget that as long as I live,” Kile said softly, watching the truck blade crush his most recent garbage load, one of many that day.