Dumped Dumpster Diving

This morning as I walked the dogs, I passed a garbage bin at the entrance to a small park. It had been knocked over and its contents were spread all over the place. Hell with it, I thought, I'm tired of picking crap off the streets. However, when I saw it on the way back, I righted the bin and picked up most of the garbage. There was still some stuff in the bottom of the bin, including two perfectly clean fleece over-shirt type garments. I took them to the laundry, gave one to Goodwill and I am wearing the other which is a nice medium grey with a turn-up type collar and side pockets and a halfway zipper. It looks really nice on me. A few weeks ago I found a little boy's winter coat in a garbage bin. It looked like a pretty expensive, trendy one. At the laundromat I asked an Indian woman if she knew of any little boy who needed the winter coat which I had washed. Yes, she said, my grandson. I gave her the coat and she was happy, I was happy and I hope her grandson was happy. It did occur to me that she might sell the coat and buy some booze, as she certainly reeked of it, but what the hell, that would make her happy too.
It does seem odd to me that in one of the poorest communities in one of the poorest states, people would so freely throw away such good, new looking clothes. I don't think they were implicated in crimes, but who knows?

Last Monday it rained two inches out of our yearly ration of around ten. Unfortunately the roof was off my living room at the time. There was a layer of barrier paper laid over the latias, but it did nothing to stop hundreds of gallons of water from slamming down my adobe mud walls and onto the old wood floor. I tipped all my clothes out of the plastic tubs I use for storage, and I raced about putting the tubs under the most active spigots. Why did I bother? The walls are still clearly damp and defaced with brown stripes. The latias are all water stained. I would feel really bad, except my neighbor has much worse damage. She is in the process of restoring her house which shares a wall with mine, and the only good way of fixing her roof was to fix mine too, so we went for it. Wrong day for no roof. I think the roofers had actually slipped over the border because of the rain. No skin off their noses I guess. No problem.
The good thing was that I took the opportunity to go through all the clothes I had tipped out of the storage tubs, and cull them drastically. I got rid of some quite nice clothes. I took them to Goodwill. I guess I could have just thrown them in a garbage can ....................