20-month-old James Beauchamp got a surprise gift from the neighbourhood garbage man, Abe, earlier this month (Photo supplied by Laura Beauchamp)

By Shane Clausing

Community

Grande Prairie boy gets Christmas surprise from garbage truck driver

Dec 22, 2020 | 11:55 AM

A Grande Prairie boy and his family were given a special surprise from their local garbage truck driver earlier this month.

Throughout the summer, Laura Beauchamp would take her 20-month-old son James out for a stroll every morning.

The two would walk around their neighbourhood early in the morning, and she would teach her son to wave and say hello to those driving by or those who were out working on the streets early in the morning.

“My son has never been much of a sleeper, so he wakes up early and in the summer months, I would take the opportunity to jump outside in the stroller around 7:00 a.m. and this is where we started to notice our wonderful garbage trucks and all of the early folks out there,” explained Beauchamp.

“I would point them (the garbage trucks) out because they’re fascinating vehicles and my son is all into tools and big trucks. We’d just be walking around the neighbourhood and wave.”

Beauchamp says that she and her son decided to start waving to everyone in the morning as a way to make them feel welcome into the neighbourhood.

“Especially during COVID times, I just felt that it was extra important to give that extra smile and wave. I was teaching him to wave and say hi.”

Through their friendly smiles and their waves, they wound end up meeting their neighbourhood garbage truck driver, Abe.

Abe would notice the family waving whenever he’d get their garbage and would give a smile or a wave back. Unfortunately, he could never exchange a conversation with them because the noise from the garbage truck would always be too loud.

While Laura would wave and smile at Abe every morning, she says that one of the only people her son wouldn’t wave to was Abe. It was almost as if he was a little shy.

“Anytime he would wave, the (garbage) truck would be driving away from us. He (Abe) would always smile and say, ‘one day he will wave.’”

Despite James not waving, Abe did notice James looking out the window every morning and smiling. James eventually would shy up and started waving after a couple of months.

After several months of James sitting in the window, waving and smiling to Abe, on December 2 while Abe was working his regular route, he got out of the truck and began walking up to the house.

“We were watching him from the window and he’s doing his regular thing and then he opens up his door and gets out. I was thinking ‘did I do something wrong?’ But then he was holding a bag in his hand and he started walking up our sidewalk,” said Beauchamp.

“I opened the front door and he said, ‘this is for the little fella’. He gave us a little note that they stick on your lid if you did something wrong, but instead it just said Merry Christmas.”

Inside the bag was a toy garbage truck for James. Laura says that she was in disbelief that a random stranger went out of his way to get her son a gift.

Besides the everyday waves and smiles, Laura says they had never actually met Abe until that moment.

“We didn’t even know his name. I was shocked that he thought about my son, and he went out of his way and used his own money to go buy my son a gift.”

Since the gift was given, Laura decided to go out of her way to get Abe a gift.

She wrote him a nice card and says she also ordered Abe a coffee mug which says “world’s best garbage truck driver.”