One Man’s Trash

By Denise Anderson First Published December 22, 1995A motorist flagged down our neighbor Carl as he was walking across his driveway.“Is that your land just to the north of here?” the driver asked.It was, Carl replied. Was he hunting?The man said he wasn't. He was just driving by and noticed Carl's fence.“That is your pasture, then?” he asked.Yes, Carl said. It was his pasture.And his gate? the man persisted.Of course it was his gate, Carl said. Most farmers have their own gates on their own pastures.“I'd like to buy it,” the man stated.“You want to buy my gate?” Carl stammered.That's what he said. “Didn't you know it's the headboard off an old iron bed?” he asked. “It's worth a couple of hundred dollars, even more if you have the rest of it.”Carl could only stare at the man. Eventually, he recovered enough to clamp his mouth shut. After all, if someone wanted to buy his old gate, he wasn't going to argue. And yes, he had the rest of the bed, it acted as reinforcement a little further down the fence line."I guess that would be OK,” Carl finally said. “I suppose I can rig a new, temporary gate with an old bedspring.”The man looked excited. “You have the bedsprings too?”Carl reckoned he did. He might even have another bed somewhere.“How about an old bathtub? the man asked. “Do you have one of those?”Carl did. Two, as a matter of fact, both with those little bird feet for legs. One acted as a reservoir for a small spring out in the pasture. The other was a hay trough for the calves. They were pretty tough things, those bathtubs. The cows couldn't destroy them.“Amazing,” the man said. “I'm an antique dealer and these things are worth something. You probably have all sorts of things around here that people would pay money for.”“You think so?” Carl asked, amazed. He would concede he had quite a bit of junk sitting around, but worth something? It couldn't be.Still, he invited the man to have a look around. Soon, the man was “oohing” and “aahing” about cream separators and old cream cans, chicken waterers and saws. He almost swooned when he spotted Carl's old rusty traps hanging from the rafters in an old storage building.“That one there's an old wolf trap,” Carl explained, pointing to one of the traps. “Don't use it much anymore, for obvious reasons, like it's illegal to kill a wolf.”The man offered $400 for it. Once Carl recovered, he agreed. If this guy wanted his junk, who was he to argue?

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