Trash

Sure, Christmas is alright, my birthday is OK as long as I don’t remember the number keeps counting up, and the 4th of July has lots of kabooms, but there’s one holiday – a week long holiday – that nearly beats them all.   In my town, this week is cleanup week!  It is usually the first week of May, but due to the flood it was postponed.   Normally, the garbage men will only pick up trash in bags or garbage cans, but this one week of the year you can put nearly everything on the curb and have it taken off to the dump.   But, really, who wants the dump to be full of useful stuff?   We’re doing our environmental duty to pick up the cool stuff we want to keep, thus reducing the amount of waste in the landfills…plus get some free stuff of our own.

I really don’t know how it works in other areas, but there’s a basic understanding that once the trash ends up at the curb, it’s fair game.   I’m a little more hesitant, though, with things like bikes or kid’s toys — you never know if something just got dropped in the wrong place.   Around here, Trash Week opportunism isn’t restricted to Crusty Joe and his rickety pickup.   As we drove slowly up and down streets, looking for good stuff, we regularly passed the same Average Joes doing exactly what we were.  Although, technically, we’re all in competition to get to the cool stuff before anyone else, there still exists a level of camaraderie. As we got out of our van to examine several computers on the curb, we were surprised by a tiny “meep meep” of a motorscooter.  Zipping past us on the street was a young man at the handlebars, with a girl behind him on the seat, carrying a 3-foot-tall bookcase.  We laughed and waved: great find, motorscooter kids, drive carefully!

Trash-picking during cleanup week isn’t for the faint-hearted; there’s a lot of opportunity to get cut, bruised, punctured, or otherwise injured while digging around in somebody else’s junk.  We made sure to change clothes into something we wouldn’t mind getting dirty; cleanup week stuff isn’t the kind of garbage with old spaghetti or bad salad dressing, but it usually comes rusty, dusty, oily, or (and these we avoided at all cost) mildewy.   Our last preparation was to make sure we had enough room in our van.  We pulled out all the removable seats that we could: we knew that we’d certainly encounter something we absolutely needed but too long to fit with the seats in place.  What we didn’t count on was needing tools, which will definitely be on our list next time we head out garbage-picking.   At one stop, we found half a 1960s-era Schwinn bicycle.   The bike was in pretty bad shape, but it had something our own vintage bicycle needed: a saddle-bag wire basket.   Taking up the room to bring the bike frame home with us wasn’t possible, as we were running out of room fast.   I found a crescent wrench in the glove compartment, which helped, but a screwdriver and pliers would have been far more useful.   We bent the basket a bit (it’ll go back), but now the Wifey’s bike will be styling even more than before.  Tools also would have come in handy with the formica tables we got:  one had a great top, but bad legs — the other had good legs, but a bad top.  The plan is to put the two good parts together, but we grabbed both tables in their entirety to bring home.   Had we the tools, we could have saved space (and tossing stuff on our own curb) by only taking the things we need.

Aside from practical items, like shelves, folding tables, and a screen door, I did have some excellent finds to add to my collection.   Trash-picking during cleanup week isn’t much different from the rummage sale season, because it’s a lot of driving around, in hopes of finding some great stuff.  And you can’t complain about the $0 pricetag.   Just a couple blocks from our house, I found this Elmo 16CL 16mm movie projector.   Much of the other stuff in the pile was mildly damp (ick – basement flooding!), but the projector just had a thick coat of dust.  Upon getting it home, I plugged it in, the lamp came on, wheels spun, shutters clacked.  I haven’t tested it with a real movie yet, but so far it’s better than projectors I’ve paid pretty good money for.  16mm projectors aren’t as common as 8mm ones, so finding one in relatively good condition and for free is a big coup.

I already had a bunch of office equipment, such as numerous typewriters (including a Ghia racecar typewriter) and a few miscellaneous things like a Dictaphone and an Edison cylinder dictation machine, and this cleanup-week castoff is now the second cheque endorser I have.   It looked like the former owner wanted somebody to take it and care for it: the machine was placed in a cardboard box, and carefully set on top of a dresser, to keep it from getting dropped on or getting wet in the grass. Sadly, one key is missing, but it is in excellent physical condition and, a big part, it still has its original lock-out key.   I’ve also often seen these with the plastic handle cracked or missing, and keys bent, so I’m quite pleased that all I’m on the lookout here is for a ‘five’ keycap.

Lastly, the best coup of them all, is a near-mint Motorola portable turntable.   I saw it from a ways away and I knew exactly what it was, even though it was closed up.   My classroom had one in gradeschool, way back when. They tended, through their portability, to quickly get beat up and damaged, but this one has only the slightest of external marks, and the latches are all straight and un-rusted.   Inside, it looks even better, so I grabbed it right up.   When I got home, I plugged it in, and immediately discovered why it was at the curb:  nothing moved when turned on.   I could hear and tell, yes, it was trying to spin, so I took it apart and lubricated it.   After fifteen minutes of elbow grease, I had it playing records again.   The record platter was held in place with a little rubber O-ring, which (as with most 50-year-old rubber products) broke the instant I put any pressure on it, but I quickly manufactured a new one from something found in my junk drawer.  Given the machine’s excellent shape, having a non-mint rubber O-ring is only a minor problem.

Apart from the other things we picked up, just the combined value of the baskets, record player, endorser, and movie projector easily saved us $50 or more at rummage sale prices, we had a lot of fun roaming from street to street, and we can congratulate ourselves for preventing more plastic and junk from ending up in the already-overflowing landfills.   Cleanup Week isn’t just about touching other people’s garbage: it’s adding to a collection cheaply, enjoyably, and responsibly.   Sadly, it’s a whole another year until Cleanup Week comes back again!

This fall, the Plains Art Museum will be presenting Trash Or Treasure, a series of events for those who collect, buy, sell and/or enjoy collectibles. Derek and I will be attending (and reporting on) the events because we qualify as those who collect, buy, sell and enjoy collectibles. However, one thing has thrown me for a loop…

Part of this event is a Road Show-esque event where you can bring in your items and receive verbal evaluations by experts — and I have no idea what to bring.

See, I don’t collect for fair market values. (I don’t even typically buy to sell at such values. I just stumble into stuff I like and figure I’ll help find it a new home where it will be appreciated — sort of like adopting a pet.)

This means that, on one hand, nearly everything I own could or should be brought in as it ‘needs’ a value put on it. On the other hand, I’m not sure what one item is worthy of such attentions — or at least won’t embarrass me with the appraisers!

This situation got me thinking — thinking in that sort of rambling way I am already want to do — about my collections. Again.

Since this article , I’ve thought lots about what my collections mean to me. It’s quite clear that most of what I buy is a part of something larger — and it’s that intrinsic collective value which appeals to me and keeps me obsessively looking for more pieces to add to it. So, if one adds up the value of each book in my collection, well, the total may seem grand — at least until you break that down per book.

While it’s true that a limited budget prevents me from going after the large price tag items, but my budget doesn’t dictate my collection either. I truly hunt based on what fits in the bigger picture.

The bottom line: Most of my collecting is about the collection itself, the value of the group, the sum of it’s parts rather than the value of the individual pieces.

But this sort of collecting is not what Trash or Treasure is about, at least not for the appraising event. Certainly no one appraiser is going to appreciate being tied up with my 500 books for the entire night. (And I can’t imaging the Plains Art Museum wants to truck all those books in either!)

So what do I bring along?

I’ve looked at my walls, buckling bookshelves, assorted oddities and wondered, “Who should I bring?”

Should I bring in Big Toe Joe? Oh, I’d love to see the appraiser’s face as he or she struggled not to laugh and referred to my delightful new friend as “Folk Art”… Double irony points if they deemed my $1 find worth 99 cents.

But would that make my eyeless poodle curler keeper jealous? Or what of my mod holiday caroler?

When confronted with the possibly of looking like I have a favorite, I tried to be more pragmatic about it: Pick something I want to know more about.

Education on the item or category is really important to me. I have the stories on how I got all this stuff, but I’m always fascinated to learn more about the history of the items. So what do I want to know more about?

I’d love to know if the vintage ceramic figurines with rabbit fur applique have a ‘real name.’ But again, we’re back to which one do I select to bring along?

Then again, this is about money — should I pick something I feel has a hefty price tag?

But what if I’m wrong and I look like an idiot?

I’ve got nearly two months to figure this out… Maybe by then I’ll have some idea.

Then again, that’s two more months to accumulate more junk to choose from. Will any of it be good enough to take along?

This is beginning to feel a lot like prom…