one man's trash.... is still trash sometimes

My parents finished moving out of their old house this week - the house I grew up in.  It was a little sad because we all love that house so much.  There's nothing to really hold us to Fremont anymore, and I whenever I went up there, I usually didn't even go anywhere except maybe to Arby's, but it still will be a change for everyone.

(Aside: I like their new house, most especially because it has an upstairs.  One of those weird quirks about me is that for some reason I don't really like sleeping on the ground floor (or basement).  I guess I'm an elf and not a hobbit.)

To help my parents, Lizzy, Big Brother and I went home.  Thursday, the movers came and packed everything up and hauled it away and we cleaned the whole house.

Part of the cleaning process was hauling a bunch of junk out to the curb for garbage collection.  And I mean a bunch.  And it was nice and cold - 15 degrees and windy - so it was the perfect day for that. My mom really wanted to give the garbage man a tip and she was paranoid that she'd miss him, so we took shifts watching out the window for the garbage truck.

We saw some interesting things while we were waiting.  Before that day, I never realized how much attraction a huge pile of garbage can hold for some people.  It was amazing how many people stopped and looked through it.  And how much people actually took away.  We had four grotty mattresses (two that had belonged to my grandparents when they were first married) and two rusty old bicycles that were hauled away.  Not to mention countless other junk.  Our across the street neighbor came over twice in his cammo pants to look through stuff.  Once he had his whole head in a garbage bag looking through stuff.  The thing is, some of the trash out there was really trash - food from the refrigerator, the used vacuum bag, broken things, etc.   I just wonder if any of that got hauled away.

And of course, we all watched the goings on from our windows.  Whoever was on watch would call the other siblings over and we would secretly cheer on the scavengers and encourage them to take things.  I believe the movers thought we were crazy, but we enjoyed it.

I was able to snap a few pictures for your enjoyment as well.  Sorry about the tree in the way.  And a the window screen in a few of them.