Our junk was good junk I'm sure a lot of people enjoy junk throwouts in this neck of the woods. They cruise along the streets in the hope they'll see the sort of stuff displayed on TV's
Antique Roadshow. Fat chance. The real way to find good stuff is to get off the glutinous maximus and go for a walk.
Our youngest son did this yesterday afternoon and within a few minutes was back with a camping tent. I groaned. I assumed it was probably thrown out for a good reason. Like being full of holes, or had broken poles and especially no tent pegs. I was wrong on all counts. It was brand new - complete - never even been unpacked since the day someone bought it at Kmart. So that seemed a good enough bargain for my wife and I to get up and go on the scrounge ourselves.
A couple of houses from ours there were two large terracotta pots with overgrown geraniums. All they needed was a prune. We sent our son back home for the hand trolley. He whinged and whined, but eventually retrieved them for us.
The junk collections in our street were all downhill after those discoveries. Gee, some people must live in a mess. A lot of the lounge suites were really filthy and ragged. How could they get that way? How could people have lived with them so long? As we strolled around our block I took a few photos of the junk piles. As you'll see when you look at the Picassa folder via the link below, some of it is pretty rough stuff.
We saw a professional scrounger. We've noticed him in past years. He endlessly trolls the streets in his Toyota looking for good stuff, especially anything with the slightest sign of scrap copper or aluminium. He'll mercilessly strip down appliances on a verge and rip out their hearts.
We could see him glaring at is when my wife found a cast out few trinkets on the next pile. "Wow, a Rolex watch!" I exclaimed, just loud enough to get him jealous. Of course there was no Rolex. What my wife found was a brass crocodile nutcracker and a pair of Aboriginal clapsticks. I know a bit about Aboriginal clapsticks. These were ersatz, probably made by some urban Nyungar Aborigine hoping to emulate the real things crafted by his desert dwelling cousins. The same thing happens with didgeridoos. Aborigines create fake Aboriginal art too. I found a metal 'Keep off the grass' sign still with it's original price tag. I brought that home. I'll put it up near a brick paved area as a joke.
In comparison to what we'd seen, we concluded our own junk pile looked quite respectable. I'd set it out as a display, because I knew that a lot of the stuff was still capable of a second life. For example of the left front near the curb there was a pair of Danish Bang & Olufsen speakers in real oakwood cases. All they needed was to have the dust wiped off them and someone could have a bit of classy HI Fi. I guess should have kept them, but they've already been grabbed. Alongside them on the ground were three cast iron Hibachi stoves. They're good too. Maybe I should go and retrieve one, just in case I need it? And how about the lattice? Very useful for another garden project by someone somewhere.
© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.
Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my
YouTube website.
Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my
Panoramio website or my
Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on
Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.
About the writerClick here to see our backyard.Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!
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fremantlebiz's journal
