‘Clean Up, Fix Up’ week is a hands-down favorite among neighborhood scavengers. It’s not uncommon to see scores of slow-moving half-tons trolling the streets while an able-bodied shotgun peruses the curbside treasure. The resulting pile in front of your house may have been the official purging of your garage and shed that happens during Spring Cleaning, but to the scavenging opportunist it’s pure gold.
It is surprising what some people consider unusable ‘garbage’. There has been many years when our pile disappeared before the city sanitation had a chance to load it. In fact, there’s a woman in our neighborhood that I know of who searches for old furniture, fixes it up and resells it at garage sales. I guess anything can be ‘saved’ if you’re willing to put in the time and effort.
Probably the best ‘dumpster dive’ we ever had was when our neighbor curbed a small deer lawn ornament. Being cast concrete, the thing easily tipped the scales at 100 lbs. Upon further inspection I noticed some artistic fellow had Sharpied all over the little fawn, illustrating a collar with a simple dog tag bearing the name ‘Bambo.’ A black mohawk completed the ensemble. Well, this was just too good to pass up, so at the insistence of my wife I hobbled little Bambo into my garage.
Don’t misunderstand. We’re not avid lawn ornament collectors, just practical jokers. From the moment my wife set eyes on little Bambo she thought of a way to use him for evil. It was Veteran’s Day when young Bambo was innocently planted in my brother-in-law’s backyard peering into his patio door.
The next time we saw him we assumed he’d accuse us, but we had officially stumped him. For almost two years he laughed about how his neighbors had put this ugly concrete deer in his yard and then pretended that they hadn’t done it. My wife blew it later when she ran into these neighbors who began to share the baffling story with her. Apparently when the neighbor asked who would do such a thing, my wife smirked a devilish grin and laughed about it. It was enough to convict her of the crime.
For the weeks following the confession I expected retaliation from my brother-in-law – like him burning ‘I like chickens’ in my front lawn with fertilizer or something. He never did even the score (to my knowledge), but I have this sneaking suspicion that if a concrete lawn ornament ever finds its way into our yard he may have something to do with it.