Yesterday, in a relentless downpour, I tried to trim away the overgrown banana trees in my yard. besides giving a home to rats, the huge banana leaves fan out directly in front of my satellite dish, interrupting my television viewing, so you can see why it was so important to get the things cut down. The reason I did it on the rainiest day of the year, is because today is bulk day and if I missed it, the cut down trees would rot in the sun for the next thirty days and attract more critters. 
When we were kids, every garbage day was bulk day. It didn't matter what you put out, the garbage men would take it, that is if my brother, sister, and I didn't get to it first. I'm sure it made my mom cringe every time we came trudging up the driveway with another cool garbage find, always fearing the neighbors would call, "Hello, Lila, is everything okay? I just saw your kids rummaging through the garbage, again.".
We were always bringing home broken toys and other crap that somebody had no use for, but once in a while we did get lucky. One time we found a working mechanical Santa Clause, which after a good cleaning, took a special place every year under our Christmas tree. The best finds were the pedal cars. My brother would find old, broken, pedal cars that people had put out for the garbage, and bring them home. After a repair job and a nice paint job they were like new. At one point we had a fleet of at least five pedal cars, that today, would be considered extremely collectable.
These days, I see grown people in vans and trucks, drive around the neighborhood on the evening before bulk day, picking through the garbage. I know they don't get anything worth much from my garbage, because Mark has it all in the house creating clutter. But if they really want to, they can dig through my garbage. About the only thing they are going to find are bags of cat poop that I scooped out of the litter boxes and of course my pile of chopped down banana trees.
I remember those banana trees cutting off my dish every couple of weeks. I never saw anything grow so fast and be so heavy. They are full of water and a fresh leaf weighs a lot. Not a problem in the desert, just HOT.
ReplyDeleteI think you should save those hge banana leaves, dry them and make your own tiki hut with them. Cool!
ReplyDeleteAnd I think Garet should be wearing a coconut bra and grass skirt. Cool
ReplyDeleteHave you ever had bananas on your tree?
ReplyDeleteI think anonymous needs a banana.
ReplyDeletehey Alan....I found the Santa on my paper route. I tore it apart to get it working again.The electric shock I received was never mentioned, however when it was plugged in it drew so much electric current the lights dimmed for a moment and it did warm up a bit.
ReplyDeleteand those peddle cars...that was my first car lot.Now I know why I sell cars for a living.