A couple of weeks ago, I was walking along a street near the Purdue campus and saw a plastic grocery bag of food (including an unopened box of doughnuts) just standing up on the sidewalk. I decided to leave the bag there, but I wondered about the back story.
Did someone buy a whole bunch of groceries, grab about five bags from the car, decide the load was too unwieldy, set one bag down, and then forget to go back for it? Had someone stolen the bag, then decided none of the food looked that appetizing? I would say that some student moving out of his rental unit for the summer had just tossed the food out, but it looked professionally packed, as though it had just come from the supermarket. There was also no noticeable odor, mold, or other sign of decay.
I found THIS while running a backhoe along the Edisto River in 1985. I used it as a doorstop for several years before someone came to visit and said, “Cool, where’d you get the barshot?” That was when I found out what it was.
I’m out early in the mornings, so I get a lot of cool stuff from dumpsters. Over the last few years, I’ve found:
2 down comforters and at least 4 quilts/blankets
maybe a dozen coats of assorted sizes–I collect them all year and then donate to the shelter
a really nice Daewoo tv with remote
dvd player and vcr (same dumpster)
really nice big stereo
bags of clothes that fit my kids
a vintage pyrex mixing bowl (I bet some college kid got into trouble for losing that one!)
houseplants
two nice wrought iron chairs
five sleeping bags, all together
handmade lamp–I saw these later at a pottery show for $200
I practically furnished my house with castoffs–everything but the beds, and I could’ve gotten those free if I’d had a truck. (Same with bikes–I just can’t fit 'em in the car.)
Not to mention all the books, teeshirts, random objects, etc…college students throw away the most amazing things!
My latest whoohoo! find was a Panasonic 10-cup fuzzy logic rice cooker. I love it!
A few years ago, I saw a Native American hatchet head in a museum. I did a double-take because my parents have a very similar one on display in their home that we found when I was a kid. We also found a few arrow heads.
My mother found a gorgeous diamond ring while she was out at a jogging track. It was covered in mud and seemed like it had been there for a while. She put out an ad in the paper and asked the people at the school where the track was located to see if anyone had reported it lost. The school said no and she never got so much as a phone call from the ad, not even someone trying to scam her. She had it cleaned and kept it. I’m guessing it’s worth several thousand dollars.
I have an early 50’s Grundi Majestic AM/FM/SW radio…not really a ‘found’ object as I bought it at a consignment store. Negotiated a pretty good price as it was broken. Took it apart, figured out the tuning cord routing, and got AM and SW working. I knew at one time the tube necessary to get FM working again, but never got around to it. It’s in cold storage in a plastic bag in the basement.
I also have a 1962 South Bend 10 heavy Lathe I love dearly…weighs 2000 lbs, so it’s not like I picked it up on a hike somewhere.
Back when I was in high school, I found a blackjack in a parking lot. If the picture isn’t obvious, it’s a springy handle with a lead shot at the end, all wrapped in braided leather. You use it to knock people unconscious. I have no idea what nefarious deeds led it to be in the lot but it’s been with me ever since. Never actually used it, of course. It just sits in a drawer.
I’ve found a number of interesting things while walking, and I’ve kept a few of them:
While clambering around a difficult-to-access stretch of riverbank along the Columbia River one day, I found this chunk of tree bark trapped in some fallen branches at the edge of the water. No idea how long it had been there, but long enough for the water to wear it smooth. It’s 24" long and 6" wide at its widest point. I figured I’d make a sign out of it or something:
Not far from where I found the “driftbark”, I found some crumbling sedimentary rock. Pulling some layers of rock apart, I found what is clearly a fossil of some sort.
Some 30 years ago I found this really cool “shooter” marble under my grandmother’s house. I assume it once belonged to my dad or my uncle. Dad didn’t remember it.
Perhaps my most dubious found possession is this guitar pick. It was given to me by my aunt, who told me she found it while rushing the stage after a Beatles concert (she saw them twice, once in Seattle, WA and once in Portland, OR). Obviously there’s no way to prove its provenance, especially since you can still purchase an identical pick today, AFAIK. Even if I could prove where it came from, there’s no way to say a Beatle ever used it - there were always several other bands on the bill who played before them, so it could have belonged to somebody in one of those bands. But I believe my aunt got it where she said she got it
Wow, Mister Rik, was the marble in that bag when you found it? I remember those bags, they came stuffed with little nuggets of candy-coated bubble gum. Mmmmmmm!
Nope, I bought the bag of gum some time later and kept the bag, and eventually decided it would be a good place to keep the marble. I keep the rose quartz in the bag too. And a lead crystal pendant.
I don’t think they’d invented Tyvek — which is what the bag seems to be made of — yet when Dad or my uncle lost that marble (probably in the 1950s).
I’ve found several things while jogging. I only own one of them, a pair of Ray Ban Wayfarer sunglasses. Since no one was in the park and I knew of no way to determine ownership, I kept them. I’ve had them for ~10 years.
Another time while jogging, I found a $10 bill. I kept it too. But it’s long since spent. Same situation —not a soul in sight.
While jogging the periphery of a neglected cemetery, I found a human skull :eek: . I didn’t remove it. It was clearly a case of exposed graves from erosion and lack of maintenance to the graveyard. I’d like to say that I wasn’t tempted (and why I was tempted, I don’t know —there was something fascinating about a clean skull lying there), but this was one of those moments where it being illegal to own human remains convinced me to leave things alone.
My stepdad found an old metal (iron?) bell on a construction site. It’s engraved with some leaves and “1881”.
Hiking a river in the Northwest I found the jawbone with teeth – it has two long front teeth, sorta like a beaver, but I think it’s too small to be a beaver.
