Bulk Item Pick-up Day

Old Hickory Village, the little historic neighborhood I live in, scheduled a "bulk item pick-up" for today. City Works trucks drive around the Village and pick up everyone's large pieces of junk that they haven't taken to the metro recycling centers (one of which is only two miles from the Village, I know because my dad and I hauled a stove and TV over there a few weeks back).

I noticed a couple things about this annual pick-up day when driving through the neighborhood yesterday morning. First, the most prevalent appliance needing to be picked up was the water heater, followed closely by a non-appliance, the mattress. Second, I found that neighbors thought it was their opportunity to do some free shopping. One lady in a Jeep Cherokee was driving slowly and checking out the piles of what so-and-so on the corner of 8th and Cleves was getting rid of.

As I passed her, I remembered a suspicious thing from the night before. My neighbor had virtually cleared out her entire house and backyard for the pick-up day. With her mattress was a lawn mower and indistinct piles and piles of other items. Well, a truck pulled up in front of my house Tuesday night. I was sitting on my couch working on the computer and I heard some chatter, some loud "thunks" and then nothing. I wondered what was going on out there in the dark but after seeing Jeep lady, I'm guessing someone was helping themselves (under the cover of dark) to my neighbor's cast-off "treasures."

Bulk item pick-up day is about over and all of the piles, or just the one overstuffed chair, have been taken away. Too bad the house on the next block over didn't empty its entire backyard, or just leave the back gate open, for all of its junk to be cleared out. I think a few of us who have to look at it would have gone over and helped move the stuff...even at the risk of getting bit by one of the five or six dogs in that same small backyard.

Life in the Village...it's a beautiful and colorful thing.