I went hunting today around 4pm. However, I forgot to put batteries in my camera! The first two pictures were taken with my blackberry camera, which isn’t particularly good. My apologies.
Regardless, I came across this massive pile of trash on Maguire near St Laurent. It was a mess. I think whoever brought the stuff to the curb did so in a hurry. There were a couple of people picking through the trash when I got there. A woman walked by at some point and talked to us – she seems to have some knowledge of the situation. My french isn’t very good but I heard the word “décéder” – this was the stuff of someone who passed away. I found a piece of ID with a birthdate marked 1933. Given the contents of the trash the old woman was Portuguese.
Most of the stuff was fairly new. The two people picking next to me (who seemed to know each other) loved the bizarre dollar store products that I kept pulling out of the bags. There were lots of musical boxes and odd figurines. I gave them plenty of stuff and didn’t keep too much for myself – there wasn’t much I really needed or wanted to deal with anyways, other than a ceramic (Portuguese) turkey I sort of wish I hadn’t given them! There was also lots of religious paraphernalia – rosaries, bibles, crosses, and so on.
This old Kenmore sewing machine was in it’s original table. The table wasn’t in particularly good shape so I used a knife I found to unscrew the machine from the table.
I plugged it in and it ran well… for a second. The motor started smoking and I could see sparks on the inside. Now it doesn’t seem to go, although the motor’s still trying.
Still, it’s a nice looking machine. I put it up on Craigslist to see if anyone wants to try to fix it. It might be an easy repair for all I know.
My most interesting find was these two unopened bottles of booze. It’s some kind of Portuguese anise liqueur that comes a stem of anise (or three – the one on the right has more, which is why I think it’s a bit darker) and a big chunk of crystallized stuff in each bottle. My room-mate did some research and found that it’s likely sugar (makes sense, given that the second ingredient is “acucar,” or sugar) and that it was probably designed this way. From the looks of it the name of the drink is Anis Escarchado Torriano. Can anyone help translate this?
I’ll definitely try a taste of these at some point, unless someone convinces me otherwise.
I didn’t bring much else home from this spot. I did find a couple of light bulbs that were in their original packaging and a 1.60 in change.
I came across another collection of bags on St Dominique. A woman was bringing some old junk that was taking up space in her basement. I talked to her a bit and she was pretty helpful and kind.
There were some nice pottery pieces which she apparently made herself. I took three with me, but only this one survived the bike ride home. I also found this old Kodak “Brownie” camera. It looks like it’s in pretty good shape, and it’s destined for the CL free section.
Looks like it’s going to start snowing tonight and stay that way for a whole day. The weather report is calling for about 25-30cm. I’m not too optimistic about tomorrow’s trash day!