Other People’s Garbage
My friend Ullie, who has horses (which sounds grand, but she’s paupersville), left me a couple of bags of spoiled hay. She knew I’d love it. Earlier this year she gifted me (god I hate that word – I only like words I grew up with when the only meaning of gifted was “smart”) with a bag o’ nicely aged horse manure. My daughter and son-in-law give me bags of leaves from the giant red maple in their yard. Before the new Green Bin thing here, I used to go around town collecting people’s bags of lawn clippings (checking their lawns first – only scrappy lawns make it; green weed-free lawns are to be hurriedly passed by). My own Green Bin is usually empty unless I’ve recently done a reconnaissance of the yard and have blackberry cuttings. Most everything else goes in the compost.
Years ago, back East, a friend and I used to troll the streets of the nicer neighborhoods the night before garbage collection. Always goodies. A death or other house-clearing was a bonanza. On the weekend we sold the stuff at a flea market. I also haunted several country dumps. Furnished my house and got much of my building materials that way.
The dump nearest my previous home got its act together (shortage of burial ground was the cause) and built a shelter for the furniture and building supplies, and a Free Store for all the other stuff – clothes, books, dishes, toys, whatever. Loved it. Me and everyone else. Community social club. I did my volunteer hours there (FIRST CHOICE!) God I miss it.
Here I look forward every spring to what I call Curb Day, formal name Trash to Treasures. People put out their unwanted stuff and drive around town collecting everybody else’s. The rest of the year you can often find some furniture or whatever out on the curb – everyday is informal Curb Day.
If I’m desperate, I will go to garage sales or thrift stores, though the exchange of $ kinda goes against the grain… Was poor much of my life and, while fairly ‘comfortable’ now, old habits die hard.
12/18/2020 @ 12:52 pm
We keep passing our things around and devise creative venues for doing it. You have found so many.
in my hippie tipi days, we lived near the town dump which was the best place to score stuff. It was a fairly organized dump, the garbage went in a different area than the furniture, bikes, clothes, etc. You’d go on a sunny weekend morning and see friends and neighbors, a social event almost.
Many colleges are in my town, and the week the students leave is affectionately called ‘Allston Christmas’. They leave their furniture, clothes, dishes, rugs, everything they don’t want curbside for trash pick up. We’d go out the night before and cruise for good things, along with half the town. The former Mr. Heron had six bikes in various states of refurbishment on our back porch, all from those May trash nights in Cambridge.
Now, I am trying to shed things after a lifetime of bringing them home. I’ll shun the orange velvet couches, but will still bring home a nice lamp if it works 🙂
koshersalaami
12/18/2020 @ 12:58 pm
My mother and stepfather bring us to flea markets sometimes when we go out and visit in the northern hills in the Shenandoah area of Virginia. Mostly I pick up little stuff. 12’ tape measure for 3 bucks, that kind of thing.
12/18/2020 @ 1:03 pm
The best flea markets I ever went to were down south! I suspect that chic NY and LA vintage store buyers go down there to do their buying.
KS if you ever want to blow your wallet and your mind and are visiting Maine, stop at Liberty Tool, and allot at least two hours. Three floors packed (like hoarding pack rat packed) with vintage tools for those three to twenty dollar prices. I never come home empty handed.
jpHart
12/18/2020 @ 6:42 pm
Curious if the darkest hour is 23:00 20DEC2020…?Just spent some serious afternoon ‘delight’
perusing: North Pacific Garbage also known as the Pacific Trash Vortex…
No doubt one would garner one of those jewelled-up Russian easter eggs if one rummaged often…apparently Pandora paradoxically is alive and well sipping some eye-level vintage wine clinking flutes with Father Time and Mother Nature.
Hell even St. Nick’s Day passed sans fanfare. Oswell! Maybe I’ll spin sum vintage F. Mac: C of luv.
And sweep the floor. Yikes and yodels! I cann sound like such a walking antique!
Purple Mountains?
Where?