​T H E  R O B O T S  O F  D E L  B A X T E R

Fate and recycling had other plans for Del.  Washing the instant decaf out of his Pittsburgh Pirates coffee mug, his left eye, then his right, saw an empty tuna can, followed by an empty pink salmon can in his recycling bin.  He put one atop the other, later switching them.  “A robot head and mid-section,” he thought.  “Robots?” he said out loud as he dashed from the Airstream trailer, leaping into his ersatz studio/workshop, left to him by his deceased neighbor, Freddy DeMarco from Dallas who hid from a bad marriage at the shore of Salton Sea, deep in the Desert. 

In the chartreuse shipping container turned creative club house, Del ignored the 124 degree temperature in the steel solar collector. He spilled metal junk, old parts, small parts, electrical parts, wire, and fasteners onto his work table. 

In the next weeks and months Del assembled robots with no plans nor instructions.  Robots with no earthly usefulness, robots as small statues, iconic tributes to recycling junk into something.  Del’s only neighbor, Farley, after an all-day binge on coffee, told him, “Hey, these are cool, like you are Geppetto and these are your metal kids!”  That insult ended the fragile friendship.  Del was no Geppetto building a Pinocchio.  He thought of himself as an unschooled craftsman.  An assembler of junk he was too cheap to discard.  Del copies no one.

 

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