Junk

Paul McCartney has a song called "Junk" on his first album. I believe some of the verses go:

Motor cars. Handle bars. Bicycle for two.

Sentimental jamboree.

If I rewrote that (not that I have the hubris to rewrite the master), it would read:

Bathroom pipes. Broken mattress. Bicycle from the basement.

Stinkie, dirty hamster cage.

Saturday was the first junk pickup in town in several years, so the curbs were loaded with the best local garages had to offer. Ours was particularly choice this year. I have, in the past, lamented that my trash was inferior to my neighbor's junk, but not this year, I can tell you that.

I had a bunch of galvanized steel pipes complete with rust and holes from the basement, a disfunctional fan (sometimes the blades turned, sometimes not), a mattress, porch furniture, Jayne's rusty old Schwinn (I cannibalized the good parts!) and soggy, slushly, moldy masses I could not easily identify from the basement flood last month on top of all the scrap wood and broken lawn tools (I get angry and throw things, OK!) you could imagine.

Well, the porch furniture went in a flash. All the metal was pulled up right away. The bicycle seemed to roll away itself despite the broken spokes and rusted chain. Someone even wanted to take the soiled mattress for his camper, but I advised him that it had been in the elements for a few months and the bugs probably wouldn't think kindly of sharing it with him. He scratched his chin and said he'd keep looking -- one would surely turn up.

So, the photo above (taken after the pickin' was done) does not do justice to my Taj Mahal of suburban scrap, but just close your eyes and imagine the beauty all topped off with a hamster cage complete with moldy water bottle.

Thought: If only I had put in expired medicine. Maybe Homer Simpson would have stopped by.