Every April, our municipal government provides all households receiving curbside collection services with a “large item pick-up”, allowing up to four large items to be removed for free.
It used to be called the annual Spring Clean-Up.
Now let me tell you, this is one invaluable service. In suburbia, in an era of over-consumption and where garages have become less a place for cars and more a repository for all the things not fitting into the owner’s house, that kind of offer is well worth all the taxes one pays.
But the pick-up provides two more community services. First, an opportunity for neighbours to gather and examine (critically or respectfully) everyone else’s various life choices. Second, for each article to have yet one more chance at life prior to that final resting place, the landfill.
Eager scavengers streamed back and forth along our street during the day, and I imagine every other one in town. Our few offerings disappeared early.
One is reminded of the tales of Hans Christian Andersen, imagining such inanimate objects, aware of their potential fate, laying in heaps by the curb, anxious but hopeful, gazing hopefully at each passerby, wishing to be saved, to serve yet one more time.
See my post of April 24, 2021:
Believe me, we saved several despairing items, mainly (but not exclusively) art:
I recognized this one from Ikea.
A good Soviet-era map is always worth having.
A terrific photo of the Eiffel tower.
Is this a Man Ray?
There were a couple more items, all salvaged from down the street, but what I was really after was the following, which was right next door, in my immediate neighbour’s pile of detritus:
I sought it out for one particular story, about a badger, for a post about these animals, because – let me tell you – stories about badgers are not easy to find.
All in all, it was a delightful day. Who knows what next year will bring?
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