Thursday, May 5, 2005

Bulk Item Pick-up Day

Old Hickory Village, the little historic neighborhood I live in, scheduled a "bulk item pick-up" for today. City Works trucks drive around the Village and pick up everyone's large pieces of junk that they haven't taken to the metro recycling centers (one of which is only two miles from the Village, I know because my dad and I hauled a stove and TV over there a few weeks back).

I noticed a couple things about this annual pick-up day when driving through the neighborhood yesterday morning. First, the most prevalent appliance needing to be picked up was the water heater, followed closely by a non-appliance, the mattress. Second, I found that neighbors thought it was their opportunity to do some free shopping. One lady in a Jeep Cherokee was driving slowly and checking out the piles of what so-and-so on the corner of 8th and Cleves was getting rid of.

As I passed her, I remembered a suspicious thing from the night before. My neighbor had virtually cleared out her entire house and backyard for the pick-up day. With her mattress was a lawn mower and indistinct piles and piles of other items. Well, a truck pulled up in front of my house Tuesday night. I was sitting on my couch working on the computer and I heard some chatter, some loud "thunks" and then nothing. I wondered what was going on out there in the dark but after seeing Jeep lady, I'm guessing someone was helping themselves (under the cover of dark) to my neighbor's cast-off "treasures."

Bulk item pick-up day is about over and all of the piles, or just the one overstuffed chair, have been taken away. Too bad the house on the next block over didn't empty its entire backyard, or just leave the back gate open, for all of its junk to be cleared out. I think a few of us who have to look at it would have gone over and helped move the stuff...even at the risk of getting bit by one of the five or six dogs in that same small backyard.

Life in the Village...it's a beautiful and colorful thing.

3 comments:

  1. Hey Jaq & Friends -

    The last comment caught my attention as something the "Miller Team" loves to talk about.

    That is you can broaden the statement to say "Life on the Earth...it's a beautiful and colorful thing!"

    All around us the earth is bursting in colors and shapes, tastes and smells, ideas and concepts and relationships - all of which we were created to enjoy and which bring glory to the Creator!

    Let's celbrate the good and beautiful and the one who made us to take it in and share it.

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  2. I think I told you that something like this happened to me, right? I decided to get rid of a bunch of toys that no longer worked... along with an uncleaned, old, potty chair. I sat it all out for the trash to pick up one morning. Along pulls up a big ole van. Out jumps a lady. She picks up a keyboard that doesn't work... AND the nasty potty chair - JUST THE COVER! Yuck!!!! Whatever foats your boat, lady. Whatever, floats your boat.

    Kind of made me sad, though.

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