I love old junk

Not all junk. For example, I hate the junk that is thrown out on otherwise scenic back roads by low life idiots. I mean good grief, can’t they at least wait until dark and sneak it into a store or rest area dumpster like regular idiots? What is wrong with them? I picture these toothless, big bellied, beer drinking, tobacco chewing guys (and girls) in huge 4 x 4 trucks, or maybe a Ford Taurus sporting a doughnut wheel or two, creeping down back roads looking for “just the right spot”. I bet they drag their kids along too, which will assure us of idiot behavior for another generation.

The kind of junk I love is the mostly buried junk piles, holding good old antique stuff that I stumble across when I am hiking through unexplored woods and fields. The junk left by people long since gone.

Every country house threw their garbage outside in piles before trucks came along that could transport it to dumps. Most people would dig holes, throw their garbage in, and when full, cover it with the dirt dug for the next hole. Others simply constructed junk hills.

I will always pause my hike to conduct an amateur archaeological excavation of a site. Sometimes I find some good stuff – a pretty colored bottle or maybe a glass dish. But, for the most part, everything is chipped or broken. Occasionally I will pack an item and carry it back with me, but usually I leave everything for the next explorer.

As I dig, I wonder about the person who left it – who they were, what kind of life they had. I hold a broken plate in my hand and try to imagine the last food it held. A single small shoe tells me that at least one child probably stood in the same exact spot where I stand. A smoking pipe inside a rusty tin box hints at the possibility of an agonizing death.

Eventually time forces me to move on. Sometimes I will look forward to returning. Sometimes, knowing I will never return, I stand back and try to carve the view into a spot of my brain where, on a lazy rainy day, I can sit and visit it again.