In one of the last stops of the day, Fryman checks the garbage can of the Family Dollar grocery store. Instead of only taking items out, Fryman also trashed an item here: a bottle of medicine. He found it while picking up cans from the gas station parking lot, and he immediately knew he couldn’t keep someone else’s prescription. “Take my picture, that way we have proof that I got rid of it,” Fryman said. As much as making money, he sees his mission as keeping the town clean, from the sidewalks to the trash cans.
We start with a partial inventory of what's in Tommy Fryman’s shopping cart, drenched in rain on this stormy Saturday in downtown Cynthiana: over a hundred crushed soda cans, a new pack of diapers, a new window blind, a pool noodle, and 4 pizza pans. Oh, and the chief offenders, two metal pipes. Even with the rope tied around them, they are too big for the cart, extending over a foot over the railing of each side of the cart.
Fryman’s life is a numbers game. 24 cans a pound, 50 cents for a pound of aluminum at Randy’s Odd Jobs Recycling Center. Seven days a week, Fryman walks around town, averaging 10 miles a day, to pick up cans and other goods to sell to supplement his disability check, which he receives for epilepsy. Cynthiana has no recycling system, and Randy’s business helps Tommy make the ends meet.
Fryman is well known in the community. People stop their cars on the road to give him cans and businesses leave them by their dumpsters. No one bats an eye when Fryman bends over a trash can. The task gets harder everyday. Fryman gets short of breath, and legs frequently buckle and give out. But that won’t deter him from his mission: to clean the streets of Cynthiana and make some honest cash.
“Not many people have a heart like I do,” Fryman said. “And I won’t give up, not until God calls me home.”
“I think it’s going to be too hot to hunt today,” Fryman said, sitting outside his cousin’s home. But within 20 minutes, he was out on the sidewalks with his cart. Fryman sees it as good for him to keep moving, even when he doesn’t feel up to it.
Fryman tosses a can from a residential garbage can into his shopping cart. Fryman seeks permission from homeowners to look through their garbage cans for trash he can recycle, as there is no recycling infrastructure through the city of Cynthiana.
“Somebody else got those cans,” Fryman said. “They’re always stealing everything.” Fryman was told cans were left in bags for him outside his storage unit next to a dumpster, but they were nowhere to be found.
“They just throw the money away,” Fryman said, staring angrily past the counter after watching a gas station customer check out with $75 in lottery tickets. Fryman buys $1 tickets occasionally, but cashier Lisa Philpot only lets him buy a couple. “I’d like him to have his money,” she said. Instead, they bet cokes on aspects of Fryman’s collecting, like how much his cart can carry or how he can maneuver items to fit.
Fryman spent minutes looking at the die-cast cars in the gas station market, counting them up individually to get an overall price. They are $8 a piece, a price he can’t justify. His favorite, which he picked up immediately, is a yellow taxi. “I love it because its doors open and close,” he said.
Fryman has many people’s names tattooed on his arms, from his mom and his dad to his cousins to the wife he had for one day. “I married her, took her to bed, and then annulled it,” Fryman said. “Her brother watched us, and after it was over I asked if he learned anything.” The tattoos help him remember and cherish these family members, as his parents and several of his siblings have passed away.
Fryman puts his belt back on after determining he has no more room in his storage locker. He wraps his keys around his belt loop to ensure he doesn’t lose them while bending over to pick up items along the road or in the trash.
Fryman walks with his shopping cart back to the gas station as storms begin to hit Cynthiana. When the weather turns bad, he often hangs out inside the store, where he jokes with customers and catches his breath until the sun returns.