Michael D. Davis.

Trash is interesting. The things we throw away. One day it’s a treasured memento or one of life’s essentials, and the next day it’s in a bag on the street.

I’m not above grabbing something good if I see it thrown out on the curb. The best time for this is, of course, City Cleanup. Everyone puts out their old furniture, semi-broken items, and other crap without a second thought. The best Item I ever got from a cleanup pile was a door. I was about ten or so, I was riding my bike through the neighborhood and I saw it. It was saloon doors. The kind of doors that John Wayne or Lee Van Cleef would come staggering through. I went back home, and I got someone to come back with me to help grab them.

There were two problems with the saloon doors. Problem one: they were too tall for my doorframe, problem two: they weren’t saloon doors. It was an accordion door. My disappointment was palpable. My father wasn’t deterred. He shaved some off the top and bottom, so they’d fit the door frame, then he split it in half and attached it to the sides with new hinges. From the cleanup pile to my bedroom.

Those makeshift saloon doors hung from their hinges for about fifteen years. After the doors started to fall apart and the slats were all coming off, we took the door out, and my sister attempted to put the entire thing on a small fire in the front yard. When that didn’t work, she chopped it up into smaller pieces and threw it on the fire. We roasted weenies over my burning door.

Although if we want to talk about the best day I found something, well, then we have to go to the recycling. I don’t always recycle, but I try to be good about it. A decade or so ago, my ma and I were cleaning the house and got up a pile of recycling. It was a nice summer day, not too hot, just perfect. We took the cardboard down to the recycling in Toledo. We heaved it all out of the car and into the dumpsters, and Ma saw something. It was a greeting card.

Curiosity getting the better of her, she opened the card up and gave it a read. The card was filled with writing. Turns out it was a love letter. This card was also among a handful of other envelopes. Ma and I quickly finished dumping the recycling, grabbed the letters, and left.

We grabbed some ice cream from Dairy Queen on the way home, then sat outside on the picnic table, ate, and read the letters. I don’t remember the names or the issues they fought about, but I remember eating my ice cream on that summer day, as my Ma read to me their love story. A soap opera in envelopes. They fell in love, they were happy, they fought, and hearts were broken.

The coolest door I’ve ever had, and one of the most memorable evenings of my childhood, both came from the trash. So, the next time you pass that pile on the curb, or you take your old newspapers to the recycling, take a look around. Ya never know what you may find. It may be nothing, or it may be a stack of love letters.