Good for the American Soul

Strafford, New Hampshire. Jake McAlpin accidentally threw away his adult daughter’s favorite stuffed animal, “Cupcake.”

Cupcake is a big, fluffy, stuffed dog that Jake’s daughter Charlotte received for Christmas when she was 4.

Cupcake has always been special to his daughter. But Jake is a dad, and dads don’t always know the importance of stuffed animals.

One day, Jake was doing some spring cleaning. Choices were made. Later, his daughter noticed something was missing after the recent deep clean.

Jake asked his daughter, “What are you looking for?” She said, “Cupcake,” her stuffed animal. And somewhere in the back of his Dad Brain, Jake thought, wait a minute, “Is that the stuffed animal I just took to the dump?”

So Jake’s wife put out a post on Facebook asking if anyone could open the city dump for them to look for the animal.

The post was seen by a member of Strafford’s local government. The official sent a screenshot of what was on Facebook and asked a colleague with keys to the dump if they could go find Cupcake.

Municipal waste removal experts dug through an Appalchian Mountain range of trash, wading through refuse until their backs were sore.

That’s what they’re called, “waste removal experts.” Anyone who shovels crapola for a living is one such expert.

They found Cupcake.

“Made us feel pretty good,” said Dan Conway, lead waste removal specialist of Strafford Recycling Center. “No one wants to be without their stuffy.”

Here’s another. Kia Rousseve is a 28-year-old bus driver from New Orleans. A few days ago, Kia was about to make her fifth stop when she noticed the schoolbus starting to lose power.

“The bus started acting crazy,” she told reporters, “started jerking, and going real real slow.”

She pulled the bus over. An onlooker told Kia there were flames coming from the bus chassis.

Kia removed Kindergarten through 8th-grade students from the bus moments before it exploded.

Then, she rushed back to the vehicle, which was spewing flames, to make sure no kids were on the bus.

“I just had to stay calm for the kids because there was crying and they were running up the street and I had to get them together.”

The bus was destroyed. The first thing that caught fire was the driver’s seat. Kia was a hero.

And lastly, that brings us to Harrison Johnson from North Carolina. Harrison raised $81,000 to retell the story of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

It all began with a school history project. The details of Pearl Harbor captivated Harrison.

During non-school hours, Harrison started reading about the historic event obsessively. He read books, old newspapers, and basically anything he could get his hands on. He even spoke with survivors of the attack.

And although Harrison lived some 4,700 miles from Hawaii, Harrison started a fundraising campaign to make sure the heroes and victims of Pearl Harbor will not be forgotten. He calls it “Harrison’s Heroes.”

Harrison raised a shipton of money by going door-to-door, selling patriotic popsicles, and doing public speaking engagements.

Harrison is 11 years old.

So I know you have a busy day. And I know your days are filled with enough trouble of their own. In fact, sometimes, it seems as though life itself is nothing but a steaming heap of bovine scatology. Different day; same old variety of scatology. God knows you can see all the depressing garbage you want on your TV screen.

So I wanted you to hear about a few of America’s waste removal experts.