Trash

I've had a life-long attraction to trash.  Yes. Trash. As a child I lived in Paris Arkansas, a lovely little town, located in a valley, surrounded by mountains. Fruit and nut trees grew wild and provided sustenance, allowing children, like my cousins and me, to roam freely without needing to come home during the day to eat.  Also, there is a cool factor about that part of Arkansas, cowboys for one, stores that smell like leather for another.  What does this have to do with trash?  Nothing. Hang on. I’m setting the scene. People threw a lot of stuff away in Paris when I was a kid, still do probably. (Americans throw perfectly good stuff away all the time, which is a very sad reflection of us, in my opinion.)

On Saturday’s in Paris we kids would head up the mountain road, where the dump was located. (I’ve never wondered before this minute why they would put a dump on top of a mountain--interesting.)  So, we’d head up and find all this cool stuff for free, just thrown away.  That’s where my trash appreciation started. Now, when I see piles of debris I slow down just to appreciate it; although my taste in trash is pretty much exclusive to metal and wood now, otherwise known as architectural salvage. Architectural salvage is basically trash with a cooler name.  (One of my favorite stores is The Guilded Salvage in Minneapolis.) I am aware, this has nothing to do with the Point, which is, of course, the point of this blog, but I’ll get back there, right after my next post….on my love of doors.  (I know, can’t wait, right?)

My collection: a self-imposed limitation to this little table.