Now that I'm caught up with posting pictures, I can babble a bit maybe. Yesterday, I got a nearly-new Dirt Devil Express vacuum for $7.83, which was what it cost for a package of new bags for it. The day before, I'd found it beside the Big Blue Bins down on P1, thrown out by someone who seems to not know much about vacuum cleaners. The bag in it, perhaps its original, was absolutely plugged, but otherwise I couldn't find anything wrong with it. So I bought some new bags, put one in, vacuumed some of my wall-to-wall to prove it does work, and put it away in the closet. Total cost: $7.83, plus a trip to Al's Vacuum Superstore for those bags. Both Al and I are wondering who would throw out a perfectly good vacuum just because it needed the bag changed. It can't have been used much, because the filter pad inside the exhaust vent is as clean as if it was new. Spotless, in other words. So, I'm enjoying another free vacuum. This makes three I've 'rescued' now from those Big Blue Bins. I'm soon going to have to start getting rid of some. The others are a couple of old upright Hoovers, and those things are practically indestructible. At least one of them must be at least half as old as I am, and I go back to before the discovery of nuclear fission, so you can guess how old that is.
Instead of "Ray" oldest Blogger, I think "Ray" oldest dumpster diver would suit best.On your old Superman cape,found of course in the dumpster,inscribe "waste not want not".
ReplyDeleteI wanted to have it inscribed with "SuperDegooper' but that's a trade name already in use, for a product that smells like hell, but removes almost anything you can get on you, except maybe the wife!
ReplyDeleteAQnd you'd be surprised who dumpster dives in the Big City. One morning, as I was going out to the store for some milk for the cereal and sugar for the coffee, what is parked beside our bins as a dumpster diver went through them? Would you believe a BMW? So don't laugh - it's an honest profession. And that isn't the only expensive car driven by local dumpster divers. Wjhen I worked security on the midnight shift down at Granville Island with its upscale shops and tony Granville Island Market, a huge market specializing in fresh everything, there used to be a lady driving a Mercedes who would come along about 5:30 or 6:00 a.m., about the time the market people would have cleaned out the stale yesterday's perishables, to get ready for today's fresher ones, and she'd park the Mercedes beside the big bins, open the trunk, put on a pair of rubber gloves, and then pick through the discarded lettuce and other vegies, and any she found acceptable were promptly tossed into containers in her trunk, until she was satisfied, and then she would carefully remove the rubber gloves, close the trunk lid, get into the driver's seat, and take off with her morning's haul. I never did find out where she came from or went to, and I often wondered if her people ever had any idea where that day-old produce she hauled home had actually come from....
So I'm not the only one who believes in the old saying 'Waste Not, Want Not'. But there's two things I'll never do: I'll never drive a Mercedes, and I'll never eat anything out of those Big Bins,
no matter how tony the shop beside them might be. And that upscale little old lady in the Mercedes should have seen the others who rummaged through those bins in the wee small hours of the mornings. They were definitely not in her league, nor nearly as neat or clean looking. I certainly wouldn't eat anything they touched,
but she never saw those others because they had come and gone before she arrived. I've wondered if she might have been running a restaurant somewhere else in town... stranger things have probably happened. It's a weird and wonderful world, for sure.
Ray are you telling me I have to drive a Mercedes or a BMW to "Dumpster Dive"?????
ReplyDeleteNot if you are living in the building where it's going on...
ReplyDeleteOnly if you wish to appear suitably stylish while hauling home your loot.
I have a two-wheeled fridge-mover style hand-truck I can use if there's something like a desk I want to rescue - and I've got four of them that way already. I threw one back and kept the other three. It's a lot like fishing.... some are bigger and better than others and some just have too many bones in them, like those Great Northern Pike we used to catch, remember?