One Oaklander's Garbage....
We're nearly done packing and cleaning up our house
as we prepare to move to France in August. Our renter is moving in this weekend - so the rush has been on. It's amazing to realize, or to take in, how much junk we've piled up, saved and stockpiled away, just in case.... Of course that case never seem to have come for most of the stuff.
We scheduled a bulky pick-up for tomorrow morning. We made the appointment weeks ago in order to cash in on our yearly trash-a-rama freebie. In our packing frenzy, we finished laying out all of the garbage/recycling in the 3 sections as per Waste Management about 10pm. As I was transporting everything to the sidewalk a man pulled up, stopped exactly in front of our house and asked if we have any metal and what kind we did have. It's now 12:15am and another van is just leaving. The couple has been in front of our house, going through everything for the past 45 minutes. I had a nice conversation with them as they scavenged our garbage for un-discovered treasurers. I wonder how they found us? Did they get our address from Waste Management? They sure didn't seem to just be cruising the neighborhoods of East Oakland looking for bulky pick-ups. If they are, they're lucky to have seen our trash heap in the darkness of our block. Funny how one person's garbage is another person's treasurer. I keep coming back to the wondering about how we were found. Does Waste Management distribute a pick-up schedule and map to professional scavengers in advance?
2 comments:
The last time before last when we scheduled a bulk pickup, we had nothing left but a pipe that belonged to something that we couldn't remember. The scavengers has gotten all of it. The regular garbage guy picked up the pipe. I don't know how these people know, but I always thought they just drove around, but it does seem improbable.
The last time we scheduled a bulk pickup, we got smart and asked the neighbor with 3 kids to make a deposit on our curb since we don't have that much. There still wasn't much left for Waste Management.
The funniest thing we ever pushed to the curb was a full sized love seat with a free sign on it. Two guys came by in a car and tried to balance it in the trunk of their compact car. I stopped that. They were going to drive like that. Too dangerous. They didn't speak much English. I told them they were welcome to the seat but safety first. In a few minutes, they ran up our hill, each grabbed an end of the sofa and ran off, like a military exercise.
Hey I peeked in the church while they were dressing it for the wedding. BEAUTIFUL!
Hi Crazy 57.
So nice to run into you on the street today. How come we always do that next to the dumpster? It must say something about me :) ?
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