Junk Drawer

By the end of November, most of the carved pumpkins, or jack-o-lanterns, have disappeared from windows and porches. Aside from a few lingering white strands of fake cobwebs caught up in branches and covered in dry leaves, almost all traces of Halloween are gone. These pumpkins on top of a garbage can seemed to be enjoying one last moment, with their slowing shriveling grins. No longer the focus of a seasonal display and greeting trick-or-treaters, their faces nonetheless caught my attention. And, since I was strolling down a dark alley, I can say they even looked a bit spooky. That’s the best a carved pumpkin can hope for. That, and having someone roast pumpkin seeds. I was possibly the last to see these pumpkins before they were picked up the next morning.

This isn’t exactly a junk drawer item, but it does have a lot of potential junk drawers. I found this dresser down the alley a couple blocks from where I live. I put it on craigslist, describing it as “shabby chic.” I wasn’t able to get it sold before the zine fest I was about to leave for. Then I realized this dresser had the perfect drawers to use as part of the junk drawer display at the fest. So, I took some of the drawers with me and filled them with zines. They looked good, and one person there even commented that they were nice drawers.

Now I’m back to selling the dresser, so the drawers have to go with it.
If I do another zine fest, I’ll need to find some other drawers. Maybe some junked drawers.
This is a nice, well-made old dresser, and whoever left it in the alley I’m sure expected someone to pick it up. But they probably didn’t expect that part of it would be part of a zine fest. It’s interesting the way things can get found and passed along.

I spotted this mythical beast just over a week ago, actually, right before Halloween, sitting on top of a garbage bin. It’s a unicorn costume, in a very small size, complete with iridescent wings, soft horn, and rainbow colored mane. I imagine some family was sorting through their Halloween costumes and decided to part with this one.
When you’re a kid, you don’t want to be the same thing you were before for Halloween. And chances are, your younger siblings don’t want hand-me-down costumes, because they want to be original, and find their own things to be. Therefore, the Halloween costume has a limited lifespan. But one like this is simply too nice to throw away. I tried to sell it on craigslist, and then just give it away. But it was probably too late, and everybody already had their costumes.
So I suppose I’ll donate it.

When I was younger, I remember kids assembling costumes from various things, rather than buying them entirely. It was more creative, and you could personalize it. Even so, the unicorn could be pretty original, with a good amount of imagination.
This magical creature costume will probably end up in a thrift store junk drawer, waiting until next Halloween.

This isn’t an individual find, but a whole fence full of finds. I spotted this by a used car lot while riding my bike down Elston Avenue on the northwest side of Chicago. This is like a junk drawer of odd hubcaps, all hung up for display. It could actually be considered a collection, or an art installation. I don’t know if these are used for spares, or if they’re just saved to be saved. Either way, it makes a nice group overall, and it might span decades of automobiles. Of all the hubcaps that have fallen off and rolled to the curb sides, here is one spot where they’ve been gathered up. There are actually probably many spots like this, all like hubcap art galleries.
I wonder if any of the car owners know that their lost hubcap is now part of a hubcap fence.

This piece of furniture probably once looked appealing, advertised in a catalog as a computer desk, or some such thing. It probably looked like a very solid product for your home. But this is the type of cheap, crappy furniture that is way too prevalent these days.
And once something like this begins to fall apart, there’s no way of saving it. I know because I used to have something like it. Mine was a cheap stereo cabinet from a garage sale. I like buying things second hand, but cheap furniture usually has a short lifespan. Whether you have a preassembled, or a put together job, a cheap piece of furniture is not meant to be moved around. It is designed to remain perfectly still, and once you exert force on it any other way, such as trying to slide it a few inches up to the wall, the joints begin to loosen. You can feel the whole thing swaying, like some tall ship that’s about to capsize. And don’t attempt to stabilize it by nailing the boards together. These are not wood. They do contain some distant remnants of wood, but they turn to sawdust when you try to treat them as wood. I don’t know if furniture like this saves any trees, but nonetheless it is just sad.
A good, old bookcase, for example, has some integrity. Even if it is worn, you can work with it—refinish it, paint it, or nail it back together. And if you leave it in a slightly worn state, it will hold together, and still look great, with plenty of character. Now there is so much throw-away furniture it’s hard to find anything decent.
It looks like the piece of cheap furniture I found this week just barely made it to the alley in one piece. The owner was most likely happy to be rid of it, before it toppled over on somebody.

The title of this find could easily be its title if it were a sculpture, or public art installation. That’s what it seemed like when a friend pointed it out on the corner of the sidewalk while we were walking along. This automobile bumper, with a can of Pabst at the center, appeared to be the work of some hipster artist. It probably wasn’t an intentional art piece, but it took some amount of effort for somebody to place their empty can there. I see cans along windowsills, or places where they’re easy to just set down. But this one makes me wonder if the person had been enjoying a beer while working on their car. Or if a car had been bumped and lost it’s bumper, and someone drank a toast to it.

However it came to be, it caught my attention, as one of those random combinations of things that look to have artistic potential, in a Pop art, found object sort of way. Not that it was good art, but now I think I should have carried it into some local art gallery.

I like finding discarded electronic parts, and trying to figure out what they are. This one I figured out, but there is something really odd about it. I don’t know much about electronics, but this appears to be a VFD- Vacuum Fluorescent Device display screen. (Thanks to the knowledgeable readers who helped identify this thing!) Judging from its size and shape, it may have been used on a cash register, or a car stereo. The odd thing is, when you shake it, a buzzy, vibrating sound is emitted. It isn’t like a spring, or something, because the buzzing and humming sound lasts for longer than you’d expect. There must be certain elements in VFD’s that vibrate when moved around.


There are theories about technological advances being derived from extra-terrestrial sources. An VFD display like this might have originally been engineered directly from one found onboard a crashed flying saucer. Maybe it is even made of metals not naturally found on Earth. This is probably all a little far fetched, but if you could hear the strange sound that comes from this thing, you might agree that it seems kind of other-worldly.

I like old, vintage windows like these, because I like vintage homes. Even though they can be drafty, and sometimes rattle in the wind like a haunted house, old windows just go well with the vintage-ness of an old house or apartment. My old bedroom window was not very well insulated, and it used to get all foggy, and even icy. Now I have new, well-sealed windows, and it makes things warmer, but I kind of miss the old ones in some ways. I wonder if removing old windows takes away something from a vintage house. If these windows were original to the house, it’s like throwing a part of the house away. I suppose if it were an issue of coldness, I would have replaced the windows too. But I would have saved one, at least, to remember what they were like.

This kitchen gadget was one of many fine items from my family garage sale. It is called the “Corn Cutter.” For those who enjoy fresh corn on the cob, but prefer it to be off the cob, the Corn Cutter is designed to do the trick. The problem is, the only real trick is just getting kernels off the cob without them turning to mush. This cutter also conveniently claims to make cream style corn, which is basically just mush. This mushy corn dish was most likely invented by people who were inept at getting corn off the cob. The Corn Cutter was tested at the dinner table, and it created quite a mess.

We wondered if it was adjusted properly, or if the blade was dull, despite it being sealed in the original package.
The Corn Cutter seemed like a good idea when it was purchased at a garage sale earlier in the year. Before it was retired to a junk drawer, we offered it for sale. I never understood the interest in de-cobbing corn anyway, except for those who have braces. But if the person who bought it can make it work, then great. Otherwise, I’d recommend the old fashioned way, and just use a knife.

I used to think it was a bit strange to see drawers thrown away with no cabinets, or anything for the drawers to fit into. But it seems I see more and more lonely drawers hanging out in alleys with no place to go. I assume these are all older built-ins that have been discarding during remodeling. I can only guess that new cabinets and/or drawers were put in, while the old ones were removed. These particular drawers, however, didn’t appear to have any age or wear to them. They were white and bright, and lying in a pile, with a cabinet on top. Maybe somebody ordered so many drawers to have built into a room that they didn’t all fit, so there were leftovers. Maybe somebody moved in who really disliked drawers, and just took them out and tossed them. A person like that wouldn’t care for junk drawers either. It’s hard to imagine such a person. The nice thing about drawers is that they conceal things very easily, and they can be as neat and organized, or as disorganized as you want. You can designate a drawer for specific things, or nothing specific at all. Drawers are often cleaned out, like when you clean your desk, but drawers themselves are not usually thrown away. These lost drawers have no place to be. If only there were a larger drawer to store them in.