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Comments:
Laura - 2004-06-16 09:08:58 Ah the best freebie.... When I was a kid, some friend of mine and I were riding our bikes around the neighborhood when we spied a whole box of shiny *trophies* TROPHIES!!! Tons of them. Bowling trophies, softball trophies, a huge trophy made out of Stroh's beer cans. Oh man. That stuff was cool. Naturally, like you, we couldnt carry that box of trophies home on our bikes so we biked home and got one of those little red wagons that every kid seems to have. I remember our conversation the whole way back to the place where the trophies were. All we talked about was how worried we were that someone else would come along and claim them but, of course, no one did. When we got back home with our loot, my mother came out to see what we were bringing home. This certainly wasnt our first garbage picking adventure and my mother was smart enough to check to see what we had before allowing it in the house. When she saw the trophies she just started laughing and laughing. Then she offered to buy them off of us for a quarter a piece. We made around $5, which meant some serious ice cream man chasing occurred later in the day. I remember thinking that I couldnt believe our luck that we actually garbage picked something my mother not only wouldnt make me throw away but was actually something she wanted for herself. I didnt question why my mother would buy those trophies off of me but later on, I heard her telling the following story at a party: She said that she went to see what her little monsters had brought home *this* time and was pleasantly surprised to see all of her friend Margaret's trophies. Margaret's birthday was coming up. So she bought all of those trophies off of the kids and wrapped them up and gave them back to Margaret as joke presents. Apparently they were a big hit. ;) * * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2004-06-16 10:31:26 That has got to be the funniest and most charming story I've read this year so far...thanks Lynne. I can just picture two kids carefully pulling their wagon loaded with treasure.* * * * * * * * * * * * raymond - 2004-06-16 11:03:19 i worked many years in the motor vehicle crash industry. i avoid putting recylcing out at the street. the dangers of refuse and other roadside-related workers is well-documented. on one visit to an ypsi twp drop-off location, we spied in the paper section discarded drawings, sketches, and watercolors. someone had given up art. several of the pieces were fair quality male nudes. we dove into the dumpster and snatched the stuff. while perhaps not our best find, it augments our ever-growing collection of art (sic) from trashheaps and garbage bins.* * * * * * * * * * * * Murph - 2004-06-16 16:35:53 When Cara and I were living in the Princeton Graduate Student Ghetto (as a planner, I'll verify: yes, it was a ghetto by even the technical definition of the word), our kitchen and living room had windows facing one of the dumpster clusters. We fished so much out of the dumpsters that we had to put 3/4 of it back when we moved to our next apartment. Dishes, a toaster, furniture, picture frames, a mountain bike... At one point we even ran out in the pouring rain to see what people were dropping off (didn't want to give it time to ruin), and scored a cute little hardwood bedside table; Cara sanded it down (somebody had *painted* it brown) and stained it, and it's one of the few things we have left from that particular dumpster.* * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2004-06-16 20:31:43 An art collection of scavenged items...very interesting. And, Murph, I just took a quick inventory and every piece of furniture I have turns out to be 1. a hand-me-down from a relative or 2. something from a garage/estate sale or 3. scavenged. And it's nice--a beautiful four-poster wooden bed, bentwood rocker, rock maple table, &c. It's amazing what you can find, like the table you described.* * * * * * * * * * * * Patrick - 2004-06-16 22:38:55 My best freebie was a little ceramic bust. It was a bust of Jesus but instead of being painted pure white or some siutable color- it was done in freaky psychedlic colors. It has a hole in the top of his head so you can put money in it. On the face of the bank is writen in a shaky hand, "Jesus Saves".* * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2004-06-16 22:51:36 a trepanned Jesus in psychedelic colors? sounds like a keeper. :)* * * * * * * * * * * * of-woman - 2004-09-04 21:59:25 woman of* * * * * * * * * * * * tv-xxx - 2004-10-03 08:25:18 tv xxx* * * * * * * * * * * * add your comment: |