By Sandy Mayle
When I was a girl in college, I needed a summer job. My brother-in-law’s parents owned the local garbage disposal business, and they were in need of a “picker.” So I became, for a couple months, a garbage collector.
I have some unfortunate memories (flinging an overheated bag of garbage into the truck only to have it burst mid-air, spilling contents everywhere) and some good ones (riding the back step of the truck in the early morning mist with the road whizzing by under my feet).
Sometimes we pickers spied a treasure or two in the trash, something broken or worn or just unwanted. These didn’t go into the back with the rest of the throwaways. We brought them into the cab. We set them apart. In fact, that’s how I got the “starters” for a charming set of clay-fired Brown Drip Stoneware dishes.