Jack Sparrow Can Only Dream

I never really believed that a person could honestly find treasures on the street. Who, first of all, would give away anything that was perfectly useful and awesome? And secondly, what on earth could be so appealing that it would posess someone to pick it up out of a pile of garbage and carry home?

On Wednesdays the trash is stuff and on Thursdays it’s real garbage. I don’t know why but there is a difference. It’s not recycling or anything but Wednesdays are the days when mattresses end up on the sidewalks and baby pens sit folded next to hundred of brown boxes within boxes. Tonight, for the first time in my life, I saw the metal innards of a sofa bed. The springs were folded on top of one another. It looked kind of naked without its couch casing and mattress inside.

The point of this is to tell you about the awesome chair I got last week whilst walking home and the stellar trunk I got tonight whilst walking home again. I always look out on Wednesdays to see if anything great will be ready for the taking. And until last week there hand’t been anything. I was strolling down Pinehurst and saw the chair, noticed it was amazing, but I kept going. Then I stopped. I couldn’ resist my temptation. 1) it’s free 2) it’s got the best fabric on it 3) I need stuff for when i get my apartment 4) freak! it’s free! So I went back and just picked it up and carried it home. As I got closer to my house a passed a mother wheeling her daughter in a stroller. “She’s carring a chair!” said the the little sprite as she pointed at me. I had to laugh, as did her moom. I got it home and cleaned it up and sat in it. I felt like a queen.

Tongiht. I just missed this amazing mirror because some guy ahead of me picked it ip first. I was kinda bummed as I heaed home. but just before I reached my building I crossed the street an low and behold…THE BEST FREE FIND! I have a small…sort of large obsession with old trunks. The kind of trunks that people took across the ocean. The kind of trunks that held memories. The kind of trunks that can hold mine. So I picked it up and carried it home.

My hope chest is an antique humpback trunk. When I was 16 my mom gave it to me. She found it in an antique store in North Dakota and had it sent to California…pretty pricey even if the trunk itself was super cheap. She took my sisters and I to New York that spring. We went to Ellis Island, although now I appreciate it far more than before (I have become addicted to family history, I wish I had more time to do it). As we walked into the huge entry room there was a stack of trunks piled up at least 20 ft high and probably 40 ft wide. I was entranced. I walked around the whole stack, looking at each trunk and wondering what story was trapped under its lid. As I came back to the spot I started I stopped suddenly. I stared at my own trunk. The one I had recieved two months earlier. It was sitting there propped among so many others. I felt like I was part of something. It was amazing. I miss my trunk.

Me