Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati

Each garbage night, pick-up trucks patrol my neighborhood, and the drivers fill up with items being discarded by my neighbors.  I have always had a bit of an interest in the garbage picker, but I have never really had the urge to pick up someone’s garbage myself.  All that changed this week, as I took someone’s garbage home for the first time.

My new house has a screened in patio, and it is rather large.  I inherited a hand-me-down table and four chairs, but I also had another table with no chairs to go with it.  That lonely table has been sitting on my porch all winter.

I started eyeballing prices on cheap plastic chairs.  The least expensive ones are about eight bucks.  So, I’ve been waiting until I felt like I had an extra $35 dollars or so to buy four chairs for my patio.

But the other night, while driving home, my wife saw that someone was throwing away six outdoor chairs:  four matching white ones, two matching green ones with higher backs, and three little outdoor tables.  Since I’ve been watching prices, I knew we were talking about close to $60 worth of product.

So we popped the trunk and became garbage pickers. 

A few moments later, one of those pick-up trucks rolled past—so we knew we had just barely gathered out treasure before the weekly scouts would have nabbed it.

The next day, after some paper towels, some Fantastic, and some Mr. Clean magic erasers, the four white chairs are looking just fine.  A bit used, perhaps, but perfectly suitable.  If I had more patience with cleaning, I could probably make them look even closer to new.

The green chairs—well, a bit of a different story.  I think the people actually painted the chairs green, instead of just buying green chairs.  So I haven’t yet decided if those are salvageable.  When I tried to clean them, the green started wiping off.  And I would definitely rather buy new ones than strip the paint off these old ones.  So maybe the pick-up scouts will get some of those chairs after all.

It’s weird, though, looking out on my newly furnished back porch admitting to myself that I’m a garbage picker.  But now I have somewhere to sit, and it didn’t cost me a dime.

Thank you for reading (and printing from) The Cincinnati Beacon.