Why I Oughta...

I've been known to garbage pick.  At the curb.  Not in dumpsters and other what-have-yous.  You know the move:  people put stuff out on the curb on their garbage day (or very often...on Saturdays or Sundays when they've just done a clean-up project) and if someone doesn't grab whatever the thing is, it goes into the truck on pickup day.  I posted about an organ late last year and when we lived back in Elmhurst, they had this wonderful, annual all-city-wide amnesty day.  You could put anything you wanted on the curb and the garbage guys would take it; no stickers needed.  That was always a fun hour of driving around seeing what people were tossing.   Mostly, you find junk.  And, this time, I think that's what I found:  junk.  It is metal.  So, the most likely picker is one of those guys in the pickup trucks with wood boards that extend the height of the bed and have all sorts of metal objects tossed in there.  I call them the "metal guys".  They only focus on

We drove by this beautiful electric organ in our neighborhood the other day.  It was out on the curb.  We were in the van.  So, we had the space. And it was a Sunday, so we had the time.  I'm also FRESH off of the Disney+ 'Get Back' series with the Beatles featuring Billy Preston playing on a Fender electric piano.  This electric organ seemed like something that deserved a home. But...before I could even get out of the car, Nat was seemingly using the ' Immediately, no' audio from TikTok .  In fact...you, dear blog reader, are in luck.  I happen to be running a dashboard camera that day -  so, here (below) is some video footage captured from our van.  That's Nat on the left and me on the right.  She's pretty clear regarding her opinion of the "FREE WORKS" organ on the curb, isn't she? I suppose this is a good time to remind myself of my own collecting mantra (courtesy of one of the Imagineering GOATs Joe Rohde):   It is enough to enjoy the exi

There I was, minding my own business, driving home when I came across this thing: a converted fridge into a kegerator just sitting on the curb.  Tank, hose, tap.  Everything right there.  Including the - undoubtedly - energy sucking 80's fridge.  There's some ingenuity at work here with the tap coming out the side of the box and the plywood shelf in the bottom to hold up the keg.  I got out, looked the thing over, snapped this photo and thought about trying to figure out how to get it into the van for like 10 seconds.  Texted it to Nat's Dad who said:  "move along".  Good advice in this case, I think.   I drove by a few hours later and someone had stripped the hose, fittings and tap off the fridge, took the tank and left the box.  That was probably the right call.