Junk Drawer

On a recent trip down to Bloomington, Indiana, I went
to a sale called “Junk in the Trunk.”
The event consisted of a group of cars and trucks together
in a parking lot selling junk right out of their trunks.
It was something like a rummage sale or flea market.
A sale like this is not uncommon, but it was neat to see, and to think about selling out of the back of your vehicle. These people had certainly arranged to set up shop in the lot, which was across the street from a recreation center.

But what if you just pulled into some random parking lot and started selling stuff? If you didn’t have a yard, but you had a car with a trunk, it would be good way to have a sale. You could avoid the fees of a typical flea market. Then again, someone always owns the parking lot, or wherever you happen to be, so it could be subject to restrictions. I see fruit and vegetable sellers in Chicago selling out of the back of their pick-up trucks, and I don’t know if they have permits or not.
Perhaps one day, a renegade band of sellers will hit the roads and parking lots with spontaneous Junk in the Trunk sales.

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.

Pictures from my family garage sale

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.

This pile of wrapping paper, bows, ribbons, and gift bags looked like the remnants of a birthday party, or Christmas day. It was actually a little of both strewn together, including a Santa bag, and ribbons in bright birthday type colors. All this seemed to be a collection of discarded gift wrapping supplies, a little scruffed up, but possibly never used. Somehow it was all open, and just lying in the alley next to an apartment building. Perhaps someone was just cleaning out their things. Or they decided not to give gifts anymore. Whatever the story was, it sure was a colorful mess.

Gift wrap is not something people usually just throw away, since there are always gift giving occasions around the corner. Some items are easy to save and reuse, such as gift bags. One time I gave my brother a gift in the same bag he’d given me for my gift the year before. It’s nice to recycle gift wrap like that, since so much of it is kind of a waste of paper. I know that many cats love holidays simply for the opportunity to dive into wrapping paper to play in. I imagine that some alley cats may have gotten into this pile.