The best thing about living in Fort Lauderdale is Bulk Garbage Day. For the uninitiated, once a month on Bulk Garbage Day you can put anything out on the curb and the City will take it away for free, no questions asked. On Bulk Garbage Day you will see large trees, appliances, even entire wooden fences on the street waiting for the City to scoop it all up and whisk it away.
I’m not the only one who feels this is a red-letter day. The night before Bulk Garbage Day, caravans of pickup trucks cruise through the neighborhood looking for household goods that can be reused, recycled or resold and I often watch, fascinated and sometimes revolted, at the items that people cart away.
For instance, last month some neighbors put a nasty old mattress on their lawn the night before Bulk Garbage Day. I admit I was shocked that they had a mattress that funky in their house to begin with, but I try not to judge. This mattress was beyond foul: It was yellowish green and featured a mosaic of horrid stains that were the product of god-only-knows-what bodily fluids. The mattress looked like a Rorschach test.
Now personally, I can’t imagine picking up a used mattress off the street, but not long after, my partner and I watched as an orange pickup truck drove by, slowed down and stopped in front of the mattress. A man and woman got out and laid it flat on my neighbor’s driveway. They laid down on it, tossed and turned for a moment and got back up. “That works,” said the man and together they put the mattress into their truck and drove away.
My partner and I looked at each other, speechless. “How tired would you have to be to sleep on that?” he asked. “I bet they’re going to use it to threaten their kids,” I said: “ ‘be good, or you’ll sleep on the community mattress!’ “ We both shuddered slightly.
We forgot about the mattress until the next month when we put a filthy old dresser out for Bulk Garbage Day. This dresser was from a set my parents bought, used, in 1967. It was a horrifically ugly set, blonde Formica and vaguely Danish modern in style. In the 70’s my dad got ambitious and spray painted the dresser black then applied contact paper that looked like marble on top, a revamping so awful that Mom covered the dresser with a sheet. Over the years the headboards and night tables fell apart but the dresser ended up in my garage where I used it to store sprinkler heads and small tools. One day I noticed that it was disintegrating, so it went to the curb the night before Bulk Garbage Day.
Who says lightning doesn’t strike twice? That same night an orange truck came by, stopped in front of the house and a man and woman got out to examine the dresser. My partner and I were watching from behind the blinds, Mrs. Kravitz style. “Look,” he said, “they’re back.” We watched as they examined the decrepit dresser, opening drawers and checking the hinges.
“They won’t take it,” said my partner. “Sure they will,” I said. “Remember the mattress?”
We cracked the window so we could hear their discussion and watched in a kind of a stupor as the man and woman shook their heads in disgust. “That’s gross. What kind of people are they?” said the man. “What must their house look like?” said the woman as they got into their truck and drove away.