Curbside Beauties

After breakfast with Donald and Helen Sunday, Beauty and I visited their new home (which they moved into Saturday) and while there we browsed in the boutique for goodies both for ourselves and to carry to the mission.

What we call “the boutique” other people might call curbside trash.

People throw out amazing things, especially when they move from one home to another. Ginny collected a slew of toys kids in that household had outgrown; she’ll sanitize them and take them to the mission for poor children.

We also gleaned (gleaners is a biblical word which sounds so much better than dumpster divers) pots and pans and dishes and kitchen utensils and all sorts of household items. It’s not too unusual for people who lost their homes to a fire to show up at the mission needing absolutely everything from scratch. For years we have collected such things from curbside, washed and cleaned them, then distributed them to the poor.

Please, instead of throwing your castoffs in the garbage, take it to some mission in your city. There are people desperate for just normal household items.

At various missions I’ve met women who escaped abusive relationships with nothing but the clothes on their backs and the baby in their arms. To get reestablished in life they’ve needed something as simple as a can opener. So why throw your used items in a landfill when you can help the poor at no cost to yourself?

Beauty and I have enjoyed some thrilling adventures while boutique shopping and once I aided a young artist in getting his own show at an art museum because he was kind to me when he found me going through his trash. He had no idea in the world that the bum rummaging in his garbage can knew a museum official.

You may enjoy reading about one of my adventures in one of my old journal entries at John’s Great Brassier Hunt.

When our kids were little we taught them to dumpster dive glean curbside treasures for one mission or the other. Once when Patricia was about six, she found a mannequin hand for displaying rings in the trash; her find thrilled her so that she announced to the family, “When I grow up, I want to be a bag lady”.

Yesterday as Beauty and I were just leaving for lunch, Patricia and Jennifer called all excited about finding an early Christmas present for me in a curbside trash pile.

They brought it over immediately.

The girls know that pictures and models of old clipper ships interest me because when my sight was better I constructed models of these. So when they saw a huge sand casting of a clipper ship, they knew I’d love it.

The casting weights close to a hundred pounds.

It is a signed work by renowned artist Charles Faust whose sand cast murals graces museums, zoos, airports and other buildings all over the country.

Darn, I wish my camera worked. When it gets repaired I’ll post a photo.

This is real art treasure and I’m so thankful the girls found if for me.

After the girls left, Ginny and I went to Georgie’s BBQ, one of Jacksonville’s best, for lunch. Because we arrived at an off hour, few customers were in the place. After we ate, the waitress gave us our bill (we qualify for the decrepit discount) but as we sat sipping tea and talking about books, the girl came back to our table.

“You two are the nicest people I’ve ever met,” she said. “I just had to tell you that”.

This surprised us to no end. We had done nothing at all out of the ordinary with this young woman. We have no idea what impressed her so; maybe other customers had given her a hard time that morning. We mentioned that we are just common, ordinary, run of the mill Christians, but that wouldn’t account for the girl's reaction to us.

Odd.

As we drove away, we talked about the courtesy of God in dealing with us and wondered if the young lady had glimpsed some dim reflection of that in our demeanor.

It was just a strange thing to happen.

Sunday night Beauty and I walked the streets of Riverside and Avondale enjoying Luminary Night — that’s always the thing we enjoy most about the Christmas season. (I busted my camera so the photos are web shots from other people).

Years ago the Riverside Avondale Preservation Society began encouraging people in the area to put out Luminaries on a specific night.

Now thousands and thousands of white paper bags holding a candle anchored in a bed of sand line area streets on Luminary Night.

And thousands and thousands of people roam the streets enjoying wholesome fun.

The event grew grassroots and everybody celebrates exactly as the fancy strikes them. Some people throw open their homes to all passers-by. Others serve cider and cookies to anyone passing. You are welcome to sit on porches to watch the impromptu parade.

Everyone dresses as they see fit. Some girls fill tight sweaters (I noticed). Some folks wear tuxedos and evening gowns. Some dress as Santa or giant chickens. Some hold hayrides pulling open trailers filled with kids who toss wrapped candy to the crowds.

A number of people greeted Ginny and me by name although we had no idea of who they were or how they knew us.

There is no order to the parades because everybody decorates as they please and drive where they will. Dozens of bicycle clubs, each with hundreds of riders cruise the streets. All the bikes decorated with Christmas lights travel in packs.

We saw one kid on rollerblades cruising with a bike club; he held bicycle handlebars with a headlight out in front of him. That looked so funny!

We saw golf carts loaded with revelers. Some guys driving riding mowers pulled garden carts filled singers. Several churches sported enormous living manger scenes and you could feed the donkeys straw or give the sheep drinks of water out of hand-held paper bowls.

Garden parties abound and folks are likely to invite strangers in.

The Family Bible Church of Ponte Vedra brings in a terrific choir to perform on the lawn of a member and huge crowds sing along with the choir.

A formally dressed string quartet played hymns in one yard; a guy with a trumpet played Rudolph from the back of a passing pickup truck. Square dancers dotesy doed in the back of another.

We saw no sign of rowdiness or drunkenness anywhere in the throngs. When traffic tangled, someone or another would step off the curb and direct traffic till the snarl cleared, then he’d move on about his own touring.

There seems to be no organization. It’s just a matter of people being there just because they enjoy what they are doing in an outpouring of simple courtesy and good will as everybody does their own thing.

Here goes an ATV with moose antlers mounted on the front. There goes a horse-drawn carriage. When floats pass on the avenue, the kids engage in a candy war flinging peppermint at eachother (yes, the impromptu parade goes in both directions simultaneously along the avenue).

Open top convertibles, antique cars, motor scooters, bikes, baby carriages, dads pulling kids in wagons, old folks on walkers…

Back in the ‘60s we’d call this a Happening.

All this stuff goes on along the main thoroughfares but when we strolled off the beaten track onto quite residential streets, cars crept along with headlights off so passengers could better see the luminaries. The paper bags glow with candles as they line the curbs and up the walks to most homes I think the tradition of luminary candles found its roots in the idea of lighting the way for the Christ Child to find His way to your home.

Beauty and I wandered these quite streets of happy Christmas for hours then came home for a bowl of hot chicken soup.

Can Heaven be much better?