FIRST PERSON
Hollis Gillespie finds treasures in other people’s trash
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Hollis Gillespie is a humor columnist for Atlanta magazine, NPR commentator and author of three books, including “Trailer Trashed: My Dubious Attempts at Upward Mobility,” published last year. The former flight attendant also runs the Shocking Real-Life Writing Academy and recently ventured into the realm of stand-up comedy, appearing at Laughing Skull Lounge every month. For information, see her Web site.
I was 5 years old in my earliest memory of digging through Dumpsters. A neighborhood drugstore had thrown out an entire inventory of defective pull toys, which were probably loaded with tetanus and detachable knobs perfect for blocking a young esophagus, as well as enough lead paint to kill a cage of laboratory rats. My sisters and I discovered the treasure while my mother was inside arguing with the management for refusing to refund her the money on a used bottle of shampoo.
When she came back to the parking lot she noticed we’d loaded the back of the station wagon with the toys and immediately thought we’d stolen them. She marched us inside to return the items, but the manager misunderstood and thought she was there to return them for the purchase price, which he promptly handed her. That moment marked the emergence of one of my favorite pastimes: the art of turning trash into cash.
Since then I have found it almost impossible to pass a garage sale or thrift store. It’s gotten so bad that on my book tours I always turn down my publisher’s offer of a limousine service in favor of a rental car because the limo drivers never take me seriously when I beg them to pull over at the sight of a promising trash pile. And you should see the stuff I drag back on the plane with me.
In Zurich once I found an actual antique trash bin in a trash pile, along with a neon beer sign and two macramé toilet-paper cozies. “Can you believe someone threw this stuff away?” I asked the flight attendant as I rolled it all on board. In turn she rolled her eyes at me, but that beer sign brought $25 from eBay. Easy money I say, considering all I had to do was drag it through half a hemisphere, three security checkpoints, customs, immigration and the sniffing DEA drug beagles.
These days I try not to trash pick too close to home because I’m starting to worry that my 9-year-old daughter might get embarrassed if I’m spotted by her classmates rummaging through their discards. But furniture is a different story. Furniture is free game. If someone leaves a wicker settee on the curb out front, I don’t even consider that trash. I consider that an offering, and who am I to turn down the generosity of my neighbors? “It’s just rude to pass this up,” I explain to my girl as I shove the stuff in the back of my PT Cruiser.
But I don’t know what I’m worried about when it comes to what my daughter will think. We were in Ketchikan, Alaska, the other day, and the tour guide let her sit shotgun and asked her to speak up when she saw anything of interest. “There!” she soon squealed, pointing excitedly. “What do you see?” the guide asked her. “A moose? A bear?” “No,” she answered. “I see a garage-sale sign!”
