Free Write Saturday prompt The smell of a dumpster
This is my post for #freewrite prompt The smell of a dumpster by @mariannewest
@fitinfun wrote her free write about the smell of a dumpster and it brought this memory back to me. It was in the early 1980's me one of my sisters and our friend were all single mothers. It was two weeks before Christmas when we took the trash to the dump. We got the trash bags out of the car and looked down into the dumpster, it was half full of toys, some still in the packages. We were trying to figure out how to get them out of the dumpster when a man pulled up with three big garbage cans full of brush. He was at a different dumpster but could tell we were trying to get something out of the one we were at. He saw all the toys and without thinking about it he threw his cans in the dumpster, jumped in it and started filling them up and handing them up to us. We would empty the cans into my friend's car, it was like a small station wagon. He filled cans until we had no place to put any more toys.
While we were filling the car with the toys this elderly couple pulled up to dump their trash and started telling us that we were breaking the law, saying you can not take anything out of the dumpster and saying they were going to call the law on us. I walked over to them and got right in the old man's face and said " go ahead and call the law, I will call the newspaper about all these toys and three single mothers getting the toys two weeks before Christmas and how you called the law" he huffed at me and drove off.
Luckily the kids were still in school so we took the toys to my house, I had a small kiddy pool, we washed all the toys, they were not dirty but the thought of them being in the dumpster, we thought they needed a little bleach on them. We took the toys for our kids and wrapped them. The rest of the toys we took to everyone that we knew who had kids. The kids had a lot of toys that year and they never knew they came from a dumpster.
The only thing we could figure was some charity must have gotten too many toys donated to them and did not know what to do with the excess. Or they were too lazy to wrap anymore. I really do not know how they came about being there but I am sure we were supposed to be the ones to find them.
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I would have done the exact same thing you did @myjob and I would definitely proudly dumpster dive with you anyday.....!!!!!😉🐸
@annephilbrick one of my kids likes to check out the dumpsters behind stores, she looked in the one behind Walgreens and it was loaded with boxes of unopened chocolates like Russel Stofer and other pricey kinds, she loaded her arms full. She has found brand new clothes in the Beals dumpster. It makes me sick that stores would rather throw these things away than giving it away or even marking it way down. Other than at the dump that day I have never done it but I am sure I would have a blast doing it with you.
What a great find! And what stupid people
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I just saw the hurricane is now cat 5... this brings me memories of Maria, I keep praying for all of you!
What luck you found them. It is not said it came from charity but who cares. If it all was wrapped why bleach it? You cannot put each toy into bleach 🤔
Very childish that old couple.
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@wakeupkitty the toys that were not in boxes we rubbed down with bleach water just because they were in a dumpster. they were not wrapped when we found them.
That was certainly a timely find!
@scribblingrama yes it was, we were blessed that year.
I most definitely would have done the same. That is very strange that perfectly good toys were just thrown out so close to Xmas.
@owasco We figured it was some organization that got them donated and these were the excess and they did not have anyone to give them to. I still have a hard time thinking they could do that and not tell the news they had toys for whoever needs them, they could have gotten rid of all of them. You could not tell we had taken any out of the dumpster it had that many but we had no room for more.