Trash Amnesty..........44;1001

Great Weekend in my little burg: Trash Amnesty Day came and was celebrated with appropriate gaiety.  Once a Year, on a Saturday, on all streets, Plymouth picks up ANYTHING (almost) that you care to put out at the curb. Sofas, mattresses, kitchen cabinets, kitchen sinks, erstwhile front doors, busted up toys, intact dining sets, working and non-working TVs and appliances. Kids. Well, they aren't left at the curb, they just run back and forth in all the other stuff left at the curb. Its A Party all over town. Its The Opp to kiss all those things Goodbye that you know you should never have bought, or things that required or didn't recieve too much maintenance, or that makes you think of someone you just can't think of anymore, or that your lifestyle became to opulent to countenance any longer.  A story in every reject, there is.

I even contributed to the party this year: an old futon mattress bequeathed me by an ill-natured former renter, a busted office chair, and a wooden, hand-assembled CD shelf thingy that some well-meaning student insisted I wanted years ago.  The chair and mattress were irredeemable, but someone took the CD tower, and that is as it should be.  The Protocol of Trash Amnesty: anybody's junk is everybody's potential treasure.

As the Friday prior to TA Saturday draws towards a close, excitement picks up.  People are hauling all kinds of stuff from the depths of basements and the caverns of garages out to the public feeding ground of the residential streetside curb.  Everyone checks to see what everyone else is putting out.  Soon, traffic patterns change on the residential streets.  Trucks appear, SUVs, pulling a variety of trailers, driving slowly up and down, with people peering intently towards the curb.  The cargo-carrying vehicles pull over at likely-looking spots, sometimes 2 or 3 groups of pickers per spot, if its likely-looking enough.  Everyone is driving slowly and looking, but I notice careful driving and parking.  However, first to arrive at the targeted trash has to act quickly if there are others zeroing in.  A particularly nice chair or cabinet will draw several contenders, for example.  One year I watched a kid on a bike go for a really neat world globe, and an older picker politely stepped back from taking the same item.  There is a protocol, and I will document it one of these years, to store in the annals of Local Sociological Customs Concerning Trash.

Of course, many people profess to sneer at Trash Picking.  If something has been tossed, it cannot, they reason, have value or maybe sanitary surfaces.  Of course, this is not true.  It has simply and purely been abandoned because someone could afford to look the other way and abscond responsiblity for acquisition.  A Trash Picker is Re-Use On The Hoof.  I am certainly an advocate of Trash Picking, although I am constantly mindful of bringing THINGS home that may not have a guaranteed future at my home--even reclaimed things that merit second chances (yes, and people and cats).  I dearly love bookshelves, for instance, and weird tables; yet, I can only use so many of either of those items, no matter how interestingly they beckon me from someone's curb. 

One year, I was walking around and saw two women pull over in front of me and hoist a sofa onto their flatbed pickup truck. I offered to help, but they declined. I couldn't help but stare at the several other sofas and chairs they had loaded up at other stops. One woman saw my look, and felt she needed to explain: "We run a shelter for dogs, and they love to have sofas to hop up on." That was a good story, and one I would never have made up. I do think however, that training dogs to get up on the furniture can not enhance their adoptability. 

I try to resist.  This year, I enjoyed a long walk downtown, around town, and back home.  All along my route I checked out the Trash Picking Event, with a reserved and detached smile.  Children were jumping up and down on abandoned mattresses here and there, cheerfully squealing.  This is good for them.  Bedbugs can't be much of a risk during outdoor jumping, can they?  Adults were eyeballing discards along the streets with an eye for uniqueness and intactness.  Groups were cheerfully formed on front porches to watch the proceedings and comment on them.  Children also got to indulge in the neccesary growth development skill of Personal Acquisition, as they pulled likely-looking junk to their bosoms.  Roller skates, gumball machines (euw for sanitary there), games, books.


Ah, books.  I was walking home and all alone on the sidewalk near my feet there it was: a cardboard box full of books.  My unconscious reaction to books is always "Look."  So I did.  Immediately I saw "Birds of North America" in a nice hardback book, with completely different format than the ubiquitous Rogers book of the same name.  Without thinking, it was in my hands.  Maybe it leapt up.  Then I saw "Garden Gifts,"  a lovely picture book of flowers and still lifes, indoor and out.  Who could pass up this pretty book, which could be used for framing, coffee table, or collage purposes?  (This book was proved worthy when my grandaughter found it a few days later and promptly tore out a nice big Sunflower Scene.)  Finally, a 2 volume set of Encylopedic Dictionaries, which also leapt into my arms, which were getting pretty loaded down at this point so I stopped looking.

I trudged home with a smile on my face, the five blocks full of interesting vignettes as fellow residents gleaned the harvest and exchanged sociological rites of all kinds.  Its kind of a tribal rite thing: if you eat the heart of the sacrifice you are bonded, only this is participating in the trash kill and communion.

And the next morning, the sound of groaning, invading garbage trucks fill the early Morning After streets. The scattered remains of the Picking are gathered up and taken away, with only a lingering sense of Another Ritual Acccomplished in the air, and much emptier garages and basements in the 'hood. 

Next year, must get videos and do interviews.  This is a true sociological event, not to mention a very interesting and possibly very useful tradition.  The Art of Trash Picking, I'll call the book....