Bring Out Your Dead

In one of our earlier blogs I mentioned the Bring Out Your Dead trash service we have in Weilerbach. Just in case you’ve never seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail, or just to remind you, here’s a short video.

Like so many services improved over the centuries; building, baking, shoe repair etc., trash pickup has also evolved beyond what you see in this Monty Python skit. First of all, they don’t routinely pick up dead folks at the curb anymore. The carcasses our Bring Out Your Dead service picks up are old washers and driers, refrigerators, mattresses, old furniture, stuff the normal trash service won’t pick up. There’s actually three or more of these Bring Out Your Dead gentlemen that occasionally drive through our town. The guy here in our video has a very nice truck, relatively clean and an automatic bell. A couple of the others we’ve seen use a much older truck with a driver and a bell ringer; a serious hold-the-bell-by-the-handle-and-shake-it-out-the-window bell ringer. These Bring Out Your Dead guys seem to show up at random times but somehow our German neighbors know when they’ll be here because we’ll see some of these larger refuse items prepositioned at the curb. But the Bring Out Your Dead folks want to drum up more business and so they drive slowly through the streets ringing their bell so that by the time they get around the block you can drag out your carcasses and be waiting for them.

The video Jeff made here was done on a very foggy day so it adds a little ambiance to the scene. As the Bring Out Your Dead guy drives in front of our house he sees Jeff hanging out the window taping him and he gestures to ask Jeff if we need anything picked up. That’s when you hear Jeff say, “No, good.”

Now the thing that's great about our Bring Out Your Dead men is that should we be struck by another Black Plague here in Germany, we've got the guys already in place to haul off the results.