Autumn mission - Leave no foliage behind

Cape Girardeau city employee Rick Leible popped out from the driver's seat of the city's truck to try to "unstick" the giant leaf vacuum, a huge contraption with one rubber-hose intake 20 inches in diameter to pick up the leaves and another that deposits them into the back of the truck.

It happened regularly Tuesday morning: Leible would beat the tubes with a long homemade tool that had a broomstick for a handle and a horseshoe-shaped attachment on the end.

When that wouldn't dislodge the clog, Leible's co-worker, Mike Anderson, would repeatedly thrust his knee into the rubber tube. Unless they discovered that the load was full, the Jackie Chan approach worked every time.

Frustrating?

Yes. But it's all part of the job of cleaning up Cape Girardeau's leaves.

All told, six trucks, four leaf machines and 14 people are cleaning up Cape Girardeau's leaf piles. Before noon, a four-member crew dumped three loads of leaves, estimated at 1.8 tons apiece. Last year, there were 630 tons of leaves dumped and 1,100 the year before that, though the dampness of the leaves affects the weight.

The leaf-collecting campaign is a mammoth one that will take four weeks to complete. It's a service used all over Cape Girardeau and one that sends residents scrambling when they see the leaf truck approaching their house.

Such was the case Tuesday for LeRoy Allen as the four-member crew of Leible, Anderson, Marilyn Kaufman and Jack Kaempfer approached his home on Henderson.

"I didn't know y'all were coming today," exclaimed Allen as he hurriedly tried to dump some leaves near the curb. He ended up asking Anderson if the crew would stop by later.

Leible said people asking workers to come back later is the biggest problem they face.

"People don't think about it until they see the truck coming -- then they want us to come back," he said. "We come back if we have time."

Anderson told him they would make all their rounds and, if they had time, make another trip, perhaps days or weeks later, for those who might have forgotten.

Assistant public works director Tim Gramling said the city's normal procedure is to do an area once. He said the crews could do a sweep once the entire program was finished. Or if a zone is completed early, workers could hit that particular zone again, but with four zones this year instead of six, that is less likely than in years past, Gramling said. Some newly built equipment allowed the city to increase the number of trucks it could use and expand the zone size. The city can complete one zone per week.

Simple, hard job

Making the leaves disappear is a simple job, city workers admit. But it's also hard work and often frustrating.

Kaufman had several blisters on her hands Tuesday, just the second day of the leaf pickup program. Her shoulder and arm muscles were sore from raking leaves.

Tuesday was not a good day to rake leaves. The weather was nice enough -- workers showed up shortly before 7 a.m. with jackets and hooded sweatshirts, and by noon, many had shed the outerwear.

But after an overnight rain, the leaves were wet and heavy.

This, of course, made Kaufman's shoulders work harder, as the rake did not move well through the stubborn heaps -- some of them about 3 feet tall. Often Kaufman would use her feet and scoot the leaves toward the vacuuming machine.

The wet leaves contribute to the machine's clogging, but so does brush and trash. The city asks that only leaves be left on the curb. City officials also ask that the leaves be raked to the curb and not into the street.

It took about 90 minutes for the crew to make the first load on Tuesday.

The process works something like this:

Leible drives the truck slowly along the side of the road.

Kaempfer handles the vacuum, waving the bulky device from side to side near the ground.

"I feel like I've been lifting weights all day," Kaempfer said about two hours into his workday.

Anderson and Kaufman rake the leaves toward the hose. This process continues until the machine gets clogged or the back end of the truck is full.

When it is full, Anderson drives the truck to the transfer station to have the truck weighed. Only the first load of the day is measured and the other loads are estimated at that amount to save time. After weighing, Anderson drives the load to the Wilver Wessel farm on Silver Springs Road where it is dumped at Wessel's request.

While Anderson is dumping, Leible and Kaempfer hitch the leaf vacuum to a spare truck.

Anderson said he found a drug needle in a leaf pile once. Another team that was getting its leaf vacuum repaired at noon Tuesday said a barbecue grill rack was found in a pile.

Anderson was excited when he found a nickel in the bottom of a pile.

"If we found a nickel in every pile, we'd be all right," he said. "That would be all right."

bmiller@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 127