Useful Roadside Discoveries

[apl68]

We see litter and debris all too often beside roads.  What about finds of things that are still useful?

I was bicycling back to the library from the weekly trip to the Mayor's office downtown to get the payroll signed when I spotted something.  Initially I thought it was a piece of trash in the street.  I realized as I passed that it looked more like a tool of some sort.  I went back, and found that it was some kind of roofing knife.  Since I have no way of finding the owner, I took it back to work.  I plan to use it as a box cutter.

Last year I found a pocket knife lying in the street during my morning walk.  It wasn't an especially good-quality one, but it made a handy replacement for the worn-out knife I'd gotten at a pawn shop some years earlier.

Two different staff members have told me of finding Maglite flashlights alongside the road.  And ratchet-socket sets.

[Larimar]

This happened a long time ago when Mr. Larimar and I were newly married and living in our first apartment. One day we took the trash out and found by the apartment complex dumpster a white microwave with a sign on it that said, "This works but I'm moving". We took it home and cleaned it, and we got several good years out of it.

[dismalist]

There's an old economist's joke: Two economists walking down the road, and one says to the other "Look, there's a $10 bill!" Can't be, says the other: If there were, someone would have picked it up long ago.

Well, many years ago, I found a $20 bill by the roadside. Doesn't happen often, but it happens.

[Puget]

This happened a long time ago when Mr. Larimar and I were newly married and living in our first apartment. One day we took the trash out and found by the apartment complex dumpster a white microwave with a sign on it that said, "This works but I'm moving". We took it home and cleaned it, and we got several good years out of it.

There is so much good stuff left out on the curb when students move around here that Sept. 1 (when many leases turn over) is known as Allston Christmas https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=allston+christmas

[Parasaurolophus]

This happened a long time ago when Mr. Larimar and I were newly married and living in our first apartment. One day we took the trash out and found by the apartment complex dumpster a white microwave with a sign on it that said, "This works but I'm moving". We took it home and cleaned it, and we got several good years out of it.

There is so much good stuff left out on the curb when students move around here that Sept. 1 (when many leases turn over) is known as Allston Christmas https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=allston+christmas

Yeah, I used  to pillage the leavings as a grad student. Got tons of kitchen stuff, coffee tables, and a solid winter sleeping bag, among other things.

[sinenomine]

I still have a nightstand I picked up by the dumpster at my apartment when I was in grad school —- 38 years ago, if memory serves.

[apl68]

I recall other grad students finding useful items of furniture by "dumpster diving" when undergrads left for the summer.  I don't recall undergrads leaving anything of the sort around at my undergrad alma mater.  We had a much less affluent student body there.

The dumpster diving eventually came to an end when the local Goodwill or Salvation Army partnered with the university to come on move-out day and take whatever students didn't want to take with them.  They'd bring in a whole delivery truck, and after that you didn't see anything left in the dumpster but pure junk.