I was paying through the nose (new clutch), when my auto mechanic became misty about his garbage.

"If the can gets knocked over," he sniffled, "they pick it up. If trash has fallen out of the can, they take it. They don't just let it sit there." He lives in the La Sierra hamlet of Riverside, which means he is getting choked up about the prospect that NEWCO will no longer haul away his trash. I would have hugged him and tried to reassure him that everything was going to be OK, but I was paying through the nose.

Still, the brief episode reminded me of how deeply Riversiders care about their trash service. My wife loves our trash haulers. Especially on green-waste day. In a very real way (and I say this with utmost respect), my wife is like a dog. She recognizes the sound of the green-waste truck. She waits anxiously as the green-waste men empty her containers. Then she spends the rest of the week refilling them. Trash haulers give my wife a reason to live. This is the city service that matters most. Certainly much more than:

(CHECK) Libraries. Until construction began on a new Casa Blanca branch, not one new Riverside library had been built in at least a quarter century.

(CHECK) Parks. Sure, tenacious park crusaders exist. But a citywide groundswell to open closed parks and pools, to protest layoffs of park workers, to threaten electeds with their political lives? Naah. Parks don't have the juice.

(CHECK) Cops. Riversiders need the police, depend on the police, even grudgingly understand when police can't always respond right away. But love the police as they love their trash haulers? You'd have to convince me.

So I was hardly surprised that, on a day when he should have been ecstatic (I was paying through the nose), my auto mechanic had descended into a deep funk. What would he do without his longtime trash hauler who, it might be said, had grown accustomed to his waste?

This is not a new phenomenon. In 1989, the City Council actually voted to junk the city trash-hauling service and replace it with (guess who?) NEWCO. Picture a fan. Picture a form of trash hitting it. Two weeks later, the council reversed itself. To this day, the city remains in the trash-hauling business. Why? Because the customers (who happen to vote) want it that way. Mess with trash (remember when the city dropped twice-weekly pick-up and instituted green-waste day?), and you've got a fight on your hands.

So, it doesn't surprise me that, in this new political season (filing deadline isn't till July), the Riverside mayor's race offers two early choices: Mayor Task Force vs. Sam "I'm Not A Soprano" Cardelucci, who just happens to own Riverside-based NEWCO. (Cardelucci recently sued the city, alleging officials slandered him by saying he's involved with the mob; city officials say they did no such thing.)

Has a parks protester, library lover or champion of the homeless lobbed a chapeau into the ring? Nope. Has a pro-cop or anti-cop activist -- one who has been vocally unimpressed by the city's handling of the Tyisha Miller shooting? Not yet. How about a whoozwhoo, hand-picked by hand-wringing, where's-the-leadership downtowners? All quiet.

"Not A Soprano" says NEWCO's contract troubles with the city have nothing to do with his candidacy. But trash is everything in this town. It's guaranteed to ignite the passions of every Riversider.

Yet, with all this knowledge, I felt helpless to console my despondent mechanic. As they did in 1989, council members are tinkering with trash in an attempt to (can you believe this?) save money. You might think the public would be grateful. (You might also have thought President Gore would be feeling quite at home in the Oval Office.) But not everything runs to form. Not national politics. Certainly not Riverside garbage. I should've told my mechanic that trash is Riverside's X factor. The wild card. NEWCO (not the low bidder -- not by a long shot) might have the city right where it wants it.