It Didn't Even Take A Free Sign!

When I was growing up we had a great way to get rid of anything from a broken TV to an old refrigerator. We would just take it to our lake house that is in a small rural Nebraska lake community. We would hand make a free sign from old cardboard and a big black marker. If it were something really good we would add a tag line that would say something like "It works!" or "Great beer fridge". We were really lucky if we happened to have a free sign available from our last give away, we could skip the sign-making step. Then we just piled our junk on the side of the road and prominently display the free sign. We often took bets on how long it would take for the treasure to disappear. I really can't remember putting something out one weekend and having it still be there by the next weekend when we returned.

Yesterday we bought a new dining room set, so we had to figure out how to dispose of our old circa 1970 one. Our old dining room set was a hand me down from one of my parent's friends. They had used it for a solid 25 years before deciding they needed to replace it. At the time we had nothing in our dining room so we jumped on the free stuff as though we were still in college. Now, at least 5 years later it is time for us to move on. We had a "special pick-up" scheduled for the garbage man to pick up our old grill so we decided to put the old ghetto dining room set next to it and cross our fingers. Today is garbage day so Travis and I carefully piled everything by the street last night. When Travis left for work this morning the dining room set was gone! It didn't even take a free sign. We live in a nice upper-middle class suburban area, not the kind of place you would troll if you were looking for "free stuff". So, who took it? Was it our neighbor that saw us putting it out? Was it the guy in the white pick-up that we have seen driving slow through the neighborhood at night? Was it the Junk Brothers? That would really piss me off if they put that shit back in my yard! And, what is wrong with the grill? Why didn't they take that? The grill is only 4 or 5 years old, practically new compared to the dining room set!