Sunday, June 10, 2012

No Shovel Required - Just add Persistence!

Saturday morning, the coffee is on and the sun is coming up, another beautiful day on the mountain. As I scan the Garage Sale ads one in particular catches my attention. It mentions  "Bottles” but crap it’s in the dreaded urban jungle, housing tracks and what kind of bottles........ Another wild goose chase I thought and more not so old junkie junk like most every other time. Uhhhh, maybe I’ll check it out what the heck, so off I go even a little late. Through the concrete  jungle I travel in search of something from a time I can relate to which is certainly not this moment of chaos & confusion in the City.  Up a street, down a street, stop signs, traffic lights, tailgaters, noise, people everywhere. I want to get out of here but the driving force of the unknown and the rush of finding something good, I forge on.
  

Finally I arrive at my sale destination and this one looks like any other and is  going to suck, again. I see baby strollers, kids toys, books, Tupperware and the usual assortment of junk from the garage everyone wants to get rid of at some point. I approach the sale scanning it, there's three cheerful soccer moms sitting behind a table at the top of the driveway all giggly but still I see nothing old, not even remotely old. As I make my way through their little sale I notice a box in front of their table and it looks like bottle necks sticking out of it, old bottle necks. I scan the contents of the box with old & new bottles just clanking against each other and my heart stops, oh-my-god, I don’t believe this. Ahhhhhh finally,  hear we go, the rush is on, like a junkie getting his fix, my fix anyway. No need to even guess what this one is by the distinct shape that I know so very well and it's friggin green, the Eagle has landed, touch down.  I pick it up, then comes the question: “How much for the bottles” in cheerful voice I shout out while trying to keep my cool. They look at each other and then one of the moms says: “You can have that one for a dollar” as I choke, “We almost put those in the recycling yesterday when we cleaned out the garage” she says.

 Although not perfect, it's a beautiful whittled to death apple green “IXL Bitters” and I didn’t even have to get dirty.............

2 comments:

  1. Awesome, Lou! Can't help but love it. And just to think, the recyclers probably would have rejected it as inferior quality glass!

    IXL

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  2. I can imagine the feeling of seeing the unthinkable from a distance in that box. Wow, what a rush that must've been. Good score !!

    AP

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