Announcement

Meet the Team: Allan Baker

Sunday, January 8, 2023

(Jan. 9, 2022) For the last two years, Allan Baker did a job in Ocean Pines that few have seen, but many appreciate.

Baker starts work at 5 a.m., three days a week, and drives the entire length of Ocean Parkway to pick up trash.

He also visits each of the community parks to empty the trash cans. Often, he fills his Ford Ranger pickup truck bed with trash five times.

Recently, Baker has been sidelined because of health issues, but he hopes to return to work soon.

Hunter, truck driver, cowboy

Baker is a quintessential Eastern Shore native, born in the area, growing up in Whaleyville, and now living in nearby Bishopville.

He was one of the original “saltwater cowboys,” helping to run the pony penning operation in Chincoteague, Virginia.

“I was raised on a farm, and I always had horses,” he said. “When I was eight years old, I was picking crops with a horse with a walking cultivator,” he said. “The horse pulled the cultivator, and you would walk behind it and harvest these peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers.”

Baker met his wife, Shirley, while riding a horse in Chincoteague.

“She denies it now, but she hollered at me!” he said with a laugh. “I was riding down the street after penning the ponies on a Wednesday, and she hollered at me, ‘Hey, you good lookin’ thing, you!’

“I rode down the road about a mile and told a friend of mine, ‘I’m going to go back and find that girl,” Baker continued. “She was walking across the road to the carnival ground, and I said, ‘Do you want to go for a ride?’”

She did, and the couple have been inseparable ever since.

“If we make it to Jan. 25, we’ll be married 60 years,” Baker said.

For several decades, Baker operated one of the poultry trucks that are ubiquitous on the Eastern Shore.

“I had a crew of men, and we went to the farms and loaded up chickens in the trucks that you see running up and down the road,” he said.

He started working for a company based in Pennsylvania in 1958, and later worked for Allen Family Food for 25 years.

Being a native and long-time resident, Baker remembers when Ocean Pines was little more than a wilderness of hunting grounds, where deer and ducks were prevalent.

“All of us hunted on the opposite side of the St. Martins River,” he said. “There used to be an island that we had three duck blinds on, and we’d take a boat out there.

“For me, too much has changed in my lifetime, but I’ve met a lot of nice people down there,” he added.

Baker had been retired for several years when he took a job with Ocean Pines Public Works.

“I was an old man, and I just got tired of sitting around the house,” he said with a laugh.

Working for Ocean Pines

Public Works Director Eddie Wells has known Baker for many years. Even before he started working for Ocean Pines, Wells said Baker was known for zipping off the road to pick up trash wherever he saw it.

“When I first hired him, he said, ‘If I’d have known I could get paid for this kind of stuff, I would have started years ago!’” Wells said.

Baker said he starts work early each day for both practical and safety reasons.

“It’s easier to start before the traffic gets bad, especially if you’re picking up trash in the middle of the road,” he said. “Being old and stiff, I don’t move real fast.”

He’s found many strange things along the roadside, including wallets and cell phones that he turned in to Ocean Pines Police. He’s also found hunting knives and, once, a large electrical box testing unit accidentally left behind by a local cable company.

One discarded item that stands out was an Old Navy gift card found lying next to an old Coke can.

“I pulled over to get the can and thought I may as well pick up whatever this is too, and I looked at it and figured somebody probably just used it and threw it out,” he said.

Unable to find out who the card belonged to, Baker took it home and Shirley later called the store and found there was still some money left on it.

“So, she spent it on the granddaughter for Christmas," he said.

Making friends with the locals

Baker is a lifelong dog lover and currently owns a German shepherd named Sarge, who came from a rescue shelter in Pennsylvania. Most days, Sarge can be found sitting next to Baker on the couch, watching TV or playing with toys.

“He was two-and-a-half years old when we got him, and you couldn’t have picked out a better dog,” Baker said.

Baker has made his affinity for dogs a part of his daily routine in Ocean Pines.

“I like to take them treats on my route, and I’ve met quite a few dogs down there,” he said.

Wells said Baker is beloved by both pet owners and the pets themselves.

“When his truck pulls up, the dogs will come running to him to get the treats every time he comes,” Wells said. “They really love to see him. They know the truck and, every time he’s out picking up trash, they’ll stop and say hi and he’ll give a treat to their dogs.”

One dog owner, Georgia Hughes, even put Baker on her Christmas card list. Her maltipoo, Skippy, is Baker’s biggest fan.

“Skippy just loves Bubba – we always call him Bubba. You wouldn't find a kinder man,” Hughes said.

She said Baker would often be in the neighborhood at 6:30 a.m., and Skippy would look for him.

“As soon as he saw him on the other side of the parkway, he'd be raring to go,” she said. “Bubba always had handful of treats for Skippy. I would tell Bubba, ‘Just one more’ and he would give him five. I'd tell Skippy, ‘Bubba just can't count!’

“They just had a nice friendship, and Skippy misses him,” she continued. “He's a wonderful man. We miss him and we love him, and we hope he gets better.”

Zero complaints

Baker joked that he has a way of measuring people who live in Ocean Pines.

“If you say ‘I’m from Ocean Pines’ you’re pretty decent. But if you say, ‘I’m from The Pines’ – you’d better look out for them!” he said. “But I’ve met a lot of nice people here.”

Baker last worked in July, before suffering a series of health-related setbacks. He hopes to return to work soon.

“Ocean Pines is a nice place and I’d like to get back to it,” he said. “All those guys [at Public Works] really helped me out a lot.”

Wells said there were zero complaints about trash pickup whenever Baker was driving the truck.

“We used to get calls all the time about trash in the parks or trash on the Parkway, but after he started, we never got complaints anymore,” Wells said. “He picks up, on average, probably 20-25 trash bags full of trash, three days a week.”

Public Works Manager Nobie Violante said it’s one of the more unsung jobs in all of Ocean Pines.

“Most people don’t know who empties those cans at the parks and how much effort goes into keeping Ocean Pines looking like that,” Violante said. “He really does a great job for us.”