Trashpicked treasures
First, a couple brief announcements …
The talented Dave Tavani produced and directed a super-cute, enticing book trailer for Simply From Scratch. Thank you so much, Dave. And thank you to the lovely Lola Culp-Osborne for lending her voice as Ingrid. Turn up your volume & enjoy!
If you’d like to read the first chapter of my book, visit the Book page of my website, and click “Excerpt.”
And now, onto this week’s theme: Trash.
I learned more about life while yardsaling with my friend Jen than I did in four years of high school. Accompanying Jen on her hunt for the perfect coffee table to decoupage was a lesson in perseverance, character (both a person’s and an object’s), quality, map-reading, map-folding, and usefulness.
In my opinion, Jen’s most impressive score of all time was a door handle for her used Jetta, which she found after roaming through rows of wrecked cars in a junkyard. As you might guess, she comes from a long line of fearless and thrifty Yankees.
South Jersey also boasts a fair share of brilliant yardsaling sharks, including my mother-in-law, who once staked claim on a set of pristine woolen Ethan Allen area carpets, and haggled the seller down to $30, right in his own driveway.
I don’t have that kind of tenacity. However, I am proud of one item that I trashpicked during summertime in college. I was driving home (coincidentally, from Jen’s house) when I spotted — on the curb next to a row of trashcans — an old wooden letterbox that had been antiqued. After inspecting it in my headlights, I tossed it onto the passenger seat and headed home. One man’s trash ….
I scraped the gunk off, sanded the wood, and stained it a warm oak color. Then I crafted little velvet pillows for the inside, and voila: the letterbox was transformed into storage for Matt’s chess pieces.
In Simply From Scratch, my narrator, Zell, treasures the very last items that her beloved, Nick, trashpicked before he died. But you’ll have to read the book to find out what those items are ….
~Alicia Bessette
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