Monday, March 26, 2012

i don't know where i'm going, but i'm on my way

Any number of good, productive scrounging rides lately--but Saturday was something else again. Among the items gathered from various dumpsters: two vintage Ash Flash flashlights, vintage binoculars, a vintage Elgin 17 jewel watch, a 1958 Quik-Chek Trouble Finder (a set of rotating cardboard discs for determining the cause of problems with one's television set), a three piece set of vintage Halliburton aluminum luggage, two Irish-made pocket knives, vintage cufflinks, tools--and a 1983 datebook with a boy and his dog on the cover, and the caption, 'I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.'

But Sunday might have been even better. Looking through a dumpster behind a pawn shop, I'm aware of a car rolling into the gravel parking lot next door, a car horn honking, and someone calling out to me, it seems. I look up to see a young woman in a modest, older car gesturing for me to come over. Pulling up near her on my bicycle, she asks me, 'Hey, could you use twenty bucks?', while fishing a twenty out of her wallet.
'No thanks, I'm good,' I tell her. 'I'm just looking for scrap metal and that sort of stuff.'
'You sure?' she asks.
'Yeah, really, but thanks, that's very kind of you.'
'No problem,' she says. And then with a kind half-smile, 'Hey, I've been there myself.'

Moments like that I may not know where I'm going, but I'm pretty sure I'm on my way.

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