Couch Season

An eye for the cast-offs of this spoiled rotten nation runs in my family, opportunistic zest and a sort of reverse snobbery augmented by early conditioning: a Daddy raised in hard times and possessed of a cerebral sense of humor. The old man dragged and sanctioned the dragging in of all manner of discards which his children reployed* ; wind-up phonographs, fluorescent light ballasts (ouch), scrap demolition materials, you name it. My brother led us to tangle together an assemblage so Byzantine that the mess enabled us to travel to other planets—so went the preposterous, successful fiction, given substance via the Luscombe.

   
In those days, suffused with the we-might-need-it-someday ethos of the Great Depression, all manner of bric a brac lurked behind Raleigh houses amid the disused Koi ponds and sandboxes. I can state with certainty that besides the Grumman Navy fighter in Pullen Park, the Eichenbergers harbored the only airplane in Raleigh: the skinless, welded, tubular-steel fuselage of a Luscombe Silveraire—sans wings and control surfaces save some splintered plywood remnants of the rudder. The faults were secondary. “Inside,“ what was left of the cockpit, retained intact the all-important seat and safety belt, stick, pedals and a camera mount. We soon had the wreck precariously balanced on steel drums we would set upon with savage ferocity, pounding out a tattoo bereft of tempo, a jungle drum section of deafening arrhythmic chaos. One evening during exam time a frazzled State kid finally snapped.
   
“AT LEAST YOU COULD KEEP ON TIME,“ he bellowed after he scaled the fence to see what he dealt with. Immediately thereafter the poor kid shoved it in reverse having spotted mum and dear old dad on the back porch supping Martinis. The guy apologized and back-pedaled the whole way, ol’ daddy-o being an NCSU prof and all that.
   
The theme expanded over the years to eventually include mounds of bicycles and whole wrecked automobiles propped up on blocks—a Cameron Park version of Tobacco Road. Soon afterwards, Mommy put an end to our amateur landfill.
   
“Less is more,“ wrote luminary architect, Mies Van der Roe, a bon mot that stuck with me on the other end of a Design undergraduate degree. Dispossession took a couple of cycles but finally, by the flip of the millennium, I managed to get the curse of stuff down to a good-sized pickup load, clothes, tools and books, (spoiled to an extent by my renewed passion for orphaned bicycles—call me, I’ll fix you up). But I still at times cannot resist the siren call of orphaned possessions, an ever-present supply that will forever endear this land to the bottom feeder like me: the bounty of needs fulfilled for those not deterred by digging through trash. Third Worldians living in villages built on top of monster dumps are forced to jostle and compete with each other for mere scraps. Here in the land of convenience(?), a world lying at your feet. Open your eyes.

I have a retinue of paths crisscrossing this old town, many which don’t involve streets. It was one such, a narrow concrete walk through one of the “vintage” apartments near Central Prison, where early on what had started as just another Sunday I spotted a discarded Chinese crap computer desk, all glue and particle board, stacked next to a dumpster.
   
I bit and slid the hatch back. Inside the box amid the less savory items, Payday: clothes, boxes of folded, laundered clothing. This was too good to let go, what with this “recession” or whatever “they” are calling this mess our nation has been waltzed into.
   
I had wiggled inside far enough to get a hand on a particularly appealing prize when mutual surprise presented itself. A resident, a pleasant-seeming woman, assumed an expression cycling between shock and revulsion upon finding me inside a refuse container.
   
“Just giving old stuff new life,“ not a lie, more tactical spin. “Welcome to the new economic model.“
   
Along with launching a case minor case of acquisititus, the trophies twingled my memory about what time of year was upon us:  Couch Season, a reference to the myriad, horrible cheap stuffed pieces which sprout like mushrooms on the side of the road upon the end of graduating student leases, June first. Problem was I was astride a mid-seventies Raleigh bicycle, a fine machine but not exactly the sort of conveyance for the sort of heist I had in mind. I hatched a plan.

“Required equipment for every surly fourteen year old.“ I heaved the weighty Brando-style motorcycle jacket, all zippers, snaps and bad attitude, onto the bed where my friend Carol’s son lay glued to his computer. “No cheap Chinee crap here, bud. Nosirree. The real-deal, Made in USA, the label reads, name brand, Excellent.“
   
“Wow,“ Nathan breathed heavily, fingering the just-so distressed leather.
“Where did you get that?“ Carol interrogated, suspicious. I’m not exactly what you call Rich Uncle Pennybags. Jackets like this one command thirty to a hundred at the vintage shops.
“Dumpster diving. Couch Season, y’know.“ I explained the significance of the term.
As I ran through it, a sort of sick sideways smile grew across Carol’s face.
“Time to ride,“ she whispered.
“Nope,“ I corrected. “Time to dive.“

Soon she and I were aboard her Corolla, not exactly my first choice for a day of material rescue, smallish but to the plus side, miserly on fuel. I ain’t cheap, I’m just poor. Plus, the nondescript quality attending your off-shore shitbox reduces the chances of a trespassing violation. No sense in tickling the dragon with some belching Detroit monster of the sort I used to pilot, although a Plymouth convertible is without question one of the most practical of vehicles available come moving day.
   
We made quick work of the original find, did a quick sort of what we had and donated the rest to the ACRE house over on Chamberlain Street. We had more fish to fry over out Gorman Street, where the real populations live.

From the tape

“A dumpster coyly hiding behind a slat fence.‘That makes me curious,‘ she said.“
“I think it’s a hit.“

*** (indicates a tape pause)

“A computer, I think I see a computer and a bulletin board.“
“If it’s a computer, they’re a dime a dozen. Rule is, today, if you can grab it ... if you have to climb in, you don’t get it. There’s no diving this trip. We’re old enough to be grandparents. There are somethings…
“We have a little bit of dignity left. We don’t ...
“Is it dignity or diggity? We have limits. And we don’t do roll-outs, we are classicists—dumpster diving, not bin diving.“

***

“Peter’s wearing a shirt he pulled out of a dumpster.“
“I needed a new Sonic Youth shirt.“

***

“We pulled a drop-off at the 1304 house. ‘I printed that shirt,‘ said one of the bike kids. Perfect. Vargo is a fabric professional uses it for her art. We have a legitimate reason for doing what our children could be doing.

***

We hit a bag of bedding. It’s like pulling Anacondas out of a bag, clowns out of a clown car; they just kept coming and coming. ‘Man sheets,‘ she said with a sneer – horizontal lines on a flannel, ‘ugliest sheets I’ve ever seen. C’mon, let’s go.‘“

***

“By now the car had so much clothing in it…“
“I can’t see out of the car.“
“Concealment is good.“

***

“We found some behind a slat fence. Lotsa flies. We don’t stop if there are lotsa flies, a bad sign. Suspicious looks from the college students, suspicion mixed with a measure of incredulity. You can’t hide a bald spot.“
“There’s a cop. Somebody must have called. It’s all over now. The cops are right around the corner. We are probably breaking the law.“ 
“Not if it isn’t marked. Only violation I can think of is the prime tenet of the United States, the prime operative of US culture: buy new stuff. We are in complete violation.“

***

“A broom that looks like it was purchased to sweep out the apartment, the contents of which are in the dumpster. Carbon footprint? Shit, someone owes us carbon at this point. We’re feeling so earthy, we’re saving so much energy, we can justify running the air conditioning. Ms. Vargo’s years back in the eighties with the Nicaraguans are showing their roots now. The whole thing feels very clandestine and guerrilla.“
“I haven’t dived so many dumpsters in one day, I have to confess.“

***

“... a perfectly serviceable dog kennel we just cannot carry with us. The scene behind this one is how many people are in need and how much stuff we throw away. Another monitor. Almost took the time out to inhale some helium. I used to love inhalants.“

***

We found a couch that we actually want ... and an entire three-inch, fabric fire hose. Checking the old couches for money. Some people talk green. Carol Vargo lives it. We’re trying to avoid embarrassing ourselves in front of the yard crew, a gang of weed eaters coming after us right now—‘that’s our stuff.‘“

***

“A home-made chair ... plywood. A very ornate, articulated chair, engraved with NCSU on the back side, routered. Oh yes, this is a one of a kind. I’m guessing the kid worked in “wood technology,“ probably the plywood division. A brass banker’s lamp, an intact mirror, a pretty nice bed frame, fluorescent fixture, tortilla pans. Good, we eat tonight. We found a macaroni dinner, a nice LP gas grill with tools.“

End tape

We ended up with a fine haul, three big loads of clothing, new clothes, tags attached, blue jeans that would cost a hundred seventy five at the mall. We went back to begin washing and sorting our treasure and made a plan to fix Mexican, tortillas, until we realized they were Indian bread pans and switched continents.

The bell-ringer, the grand score of the day was accompanied by a gut-weakening, joyous shock wave akin to teenage love. Blackbeard’s treasure? Cold Fusion? Pot o’ gold? Forget it, bo.   

Socks, ordinary white athletic socks, a decades supply, clean with most with their mates, displaying once again, as always, that when you wake up in the morning, like a top or a coin, you never know how the day is going to spin off.   

Only in America.

* Reploy (v) 1: To put someone else’s discarded possession to new use.