Gold is where you find it

Often when watching Antiques RoadShow, people have found things of great value while dumpster diving. Others found have found great pieces while picking through people’s trash at curbside. There have been shows on TV about people whose survival depends on dumpster diving. It has always seemed icky to me and maybe I thought I was above that sort of thing.

Two days ago, I was walking out to the mailbox, when my neighbor came rushing by headed toward the dumpster. She did not have any trash in hand, so my natural curiosity peaked up. I asked her what happened and she replied that her husband had helped with some cleaning and trash removal and when he did; he mistakenly threw away their Silver Dollar City season passes and what she referred to as digital codes for downloading purchased digital content. She said it amounted to several hundred dollars worth of items.

I walked over with her to look into the abyss. Her anxiety level was elevated and she was nearly in tears. She is short and not athletic in stature and as I peered into that abyss I thought it did not look all that horrible as most things were in sealed plastic bags. So, up, over and in I went on my first ever dumpster dive, picking and flipping bags and cardboard. I wish I could say that I saved the day, but I did not. I found and opened her trash bag (tip...bags have different colors, logos and colored ties) but the missing passes and codes were not in there. Now two days later I wonder if they aren’t still in their apartment somewhere.

I rushed home from the dumpster and hit the shower. The event was not as disgusting as I had thought it would be. After all, the astronauts recycle their own urine. I am not sure how they keep track of whose urine is which, but those folks are pretty high up on the food chain, so a little dip in the dumpster is not all that bad for a man at my level. I saw some nice stuff in there this morning. If I had an outlet for it I may have retrieved it. Here in the apartments, people are moving in or out on a regular basis. A few weeks back someone had emptied an apartment and put a bunch of decent furniture beside the dumpster and within a day and a half it was gone, before the trash truck came by. No doubt someone else was moving in and didn’t have any furniture. There’s gold in them there trash piles!