Can Man Carl

Interview with a Can Crusher Extraordinaire! Submitted by Saskia Tepe

Carl Gehrke Senior turns 98 next year, and he’s finally decided to put up his feet and retire from his “job” at Indian Skies. He thinks of it as his “job” because he’s been crushing aluminum cans and selling them by the barrel for 35 years.

When he started his official retirement and moved from Wisconsin to Indian Skies in 1987, five years after the Resort was established, Carl quickly found himself bored.

“When one of my fellow residents, Frank Brix, invited me to help out with can crushing, it gave me something to do and keep me busy,” said Carl. “When we had 8 barrels full of crushed cans, we took them up Hunt Highway in a truck, and sold them. For a long time, we could get around $1 per 1lb. Now it’s down to about 70 cents for 1 lb.”

Carl’s wife Jean was as bored as her husband and while he was crushing cans, she decided the resort needed activities and a Recreation Fund and went about setting up the original Recreation Board. When her daughter Susan and husband Joe moved to the resort, she enlisted their help in setting up the St Michael’s Thrift Store, which is still going strong. So, it’s hardly surprising that “Recycle” is the Gehrke family’s middle name!

When Frank Brix moved on, Carl decided to continue the crushing work himself. He loved the hours – he could set the time to pick up and crush cans to suit other family commitments. He could rearrange his work to suit the weather and avoid the worst of the hot sun on his back.

During Snowbird Season, it takes him about an hour and a half to empty the three barrels dotted around the Resort that are filled by residents on a daily basis. He uses his cart to move the cans to the area in the green gated compound, where the crusher is located.

“When there are less people in the park, and there’s not that many cans, or I feel a bit tired, I might leave it a day or two to crush,” he tells me. I can see how frail he looks as I interview him, and am amazed he’s still been doing this all summer. Jean pipes in “It’s really hurting him to have to stop doing this, but he just can’t do it anymore.”

I checked how much Carl raised over the two years I served as Treasurer to the Recreation Board. Between 2020 and this month, I banked $1362.5 for Carl. That’s less than he banked before because of dropping prices for aluminum. I’ll let you work out a ballpark figure for how much he has raised over 35 years and contributed to the children of Coolidge!