United Gamers

[CasanovaFrankenstein]

It is the most wonderful 3 day holiday ever!

Each year, my city has a curbside clean up day. On Thursday, people are allowed to start putting stuff out. They get to put up to 2 big appliances,no computers or TVs, and as much other non-garbage crap that they no longer want out on the curb. The city plans to pick up everything useful on Saturday. Most of that stuff never makes it.

People come from all over the state and others come from even farther to salvage as much useful,often not too useful, they can get their hands on. Some of them drive compact cars, others have vans. The best one I have seen so far was an extended bed Ford F350, with super high sides, and behind it was a 20ft enclosed cargo trailer. Both the pickup and the trailer were full of scrap metal.

The second best one I saw was a twelve year old kid on a bike, with a child trailer behind it. The bike had side saddles full of stuff and the trailer had several cargo totes lashed to it filled with other stuff including a giant plastic candy cane. Note: It was early in the day, so the kid could have easily collected all of the junk, the bike and the trailer by visiting just a few houses.

This is also some of the best people watching around. I get to see city workers driving city trucks around on their breaks, horribly ancient men in nearly as ancient cars, and I even saw a really pregnant woman smoking as she drove her kids around in their beat up minivan--at least the windows are down.

Right now, I would say that it is averaging a scavenge vehicle going by my house every 40 seconds. My little neighborhood is landlocked (only one entrance), and is really out of the way. I imagine that some of the easier to access neighborhoods are getting way more traffic. This will be going on all night-right up until the city's garbage trucks haul everything else off by Saturday night. There will be people shining spotlights on my lawn at 4am. In past years, I've stayed up to check.

As of Friday afternoon, most of the stuff that I put out is already gone, broken dresser, broken hat rack and a rusted fire ring. The only thing left is a baby changing table in pretty good condition--not sure why it hasn't been taken yet.

For the first few years I also drove around, but I really don't have any use for most of the stuff and most is way beyond my ability to repair.

During this time, I am never let the kids ride their bikes in the street till this is over because of the increased traffic and because someone always gets their bike stolen if they leave it unattended for just a minute.

By Sunday all that will be left are a few lonely toilets and car tires--city won't collect those either.

[Morlok]

That's beast.