Early in the book Murray talks about her dad going through the trash. Man, oh man, do I love dumpster diving. I've never really been brave enough to actually dig through dumpsters, but I've always been fond of trash. In fact, my first forays into dumpster diving were around the age of 8 or so.
We were station in Altus, Oklahoma at the time, and there just wasn't a whole lot to do in the neighborhood. I sometimes made extra cash by picking up aluminum cans and having my dad take them to the recycling center for me. I usually got about three to four dollars from a 12 gallon trash bag of cans (crushed of course). But I also picked out small appliances and took them apart. I remember finding a rotatory dial telephone once and spending the evening removing the casing and separating the parts. I kept the bell for awhile, and stuck the magnet on the fridge, I saved all the screws and placed them in my mom's tool box.
But I've also picked up furniture on the side of the road. One of my favorite tables I picked up while walking back to my dorm room one day. It wasn't in very good condition, but it had that amazing kidney shape and was fairly tall, with a drawer. In order to cover the poor condition of the table top I wrapped it up in a piece of green fabric and it looked passable in my last dorm room and first apartment. It worked quite well for dropping mail.
I'm not opposed to going through trash for something usable. I'm not quite ambitious enough to dig through the really nasty stuff, but I will definitely pick up things on the top that aren't touching questionable substances. We throw away so much in this country, but then it seems no one has time to try to fix anything or find it a better home. Some of us have to be proactive about find those throwaways new places to live.
My review can be found over at Goodreads.com.
This reminds me of a scene in the so-so movie Mouth to Mouth (featuring a nearly bald Ellen Page): Basically, there's this group of roving homeless children, and the youngest of them, who is maybe 12 at most, stands on the edge of a dumpster (without first looking in) and spreads his arms out like, "Hey look at me!" and falls in backwards. Whereupon he, of course, lands on a bunch of broken glass and needles and dies.
ReplyDeleteSo just look before you leap, is all I'm saying.
Dayna,
ReplyDeleteI promise not to fall back into a garbage dumpster. This sounds like a bad idea all around.