Things Besides Books
Groucho Marx once supposedly quipped “Outside of dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” Other people may well have beaten him to the joke, but at any rate one thing that’s clear is dogs prefer other things to books. Like sticks. So in that spirit, here are free things people have put out for the non-readers out there.
Maybe this pile of sticks below the library just happens to be there, but I like to think they’re for dogs.
And if it’s not sticks, it’s balls. Maybe this “Play Library” is for kids, but it’s hanging from a tree at the nearby dog park, so I’m guessing it’s for beasts.
Free Art
A couple of people host art exchanges. This one is hanging on a fence, I assume because it’s easier to display that way (with a water bowl for dogs).
These people went the traditional little library route.
Other Free Things
I posted a photo of this garden supply library earlier this year. It contains an assortment of tools, fertilizer and seeds.
Free flowers.
Free figs.
The note on this reads “Anything on/near desk, including desk (just leave stuff on ground if you take desk!)”
And of course books are for the taking.
couple houses down from me had a big pile of bricks with a nice white wood sign about a3 sized that said free to take
so i took the sign
figured it’d be nice for the missus to paint on
in hindsight its probably good i wasnt spotted
It is said that Germans, and I would guess by extension all Germanic peoples, are very literal and don’t really get sarcasm. I’ve seen this in action myself, countless times. So if, for example, someone is complaining about a new government plan, and you agree that it would be a disaster, in America you could say, “Oh that sounds like a wonderful plan,” and roll your eyes and the complainer would say, “I know, right? What are they thinking.” In Germany if you did this the German would respond, “No, it is not a wonderful plan! It is a terrible plan and here are my reasons why!”
So you, the Dutchman, could say, “The sign literally said free to take and I took it.”
They (the Germans) are great satirists though, I will give them that.
i mean….that would have been what i said if asked…@matthewcrawley
but i did eventually come to the conclusion maybe i misunderstood the instructions a little
still….made for a real nice painting surface
i’m not hugely upset about the mistake
This made me laugh so hard!
My favorite chair, a giant La-z-boy, was left out for free in Connecticut many years ago. I have toted that baby across the country twice and it’s a prized possession. It went with me from Hartford to Houston to California to Virginia and it’s never let me down.
I have also found a Martin DC-15E guitar in the dumpster. It had a little crack that I fixed and it’s been my go-to slack key instrument ever since.
The universe provides.
You could easily write a bad breakup story about that guitar.
I also got some very nice free clothes from a bad breakup story. When I lived on Jackson Blvd in Chicago around 2000, there was a youngish couple of well-off guys living across the street in an historic townhouse. I remember one snowy, sloppy winter week in Chicago where they were fighting for weeks, often outside publicly. One night, I’m walking my dog around the blocks and through the very nice alleys in this historic neighborhood, and there’s a huge pile of clothes out by the garbage. The dog is nosing around and I take a look and I see some really nice men’s things. There’s a Prada coat. A Brooks Brothers trench. Fantastic designer (and I mean couture) shirts and things. I felt bad about the breakup and continued on home. Later that night, I thought about those clothes getting ruined, so I went back out with a big garbage bag and grabbed a bunch of stuff. Turns out the guy who got his ass thrown out was exactly my size. Anyway, a few days later, I ran into the guy who was still living in the townhouse, and I told him that I took some of the clothes. He said he was happy someone would get use out of them besides his scumbag ex, and wished me well. I separated out what I wanted to keep and gave the rest to Cathedral Shelter’s resale shop. I don’t have much use for really nice clothes on the farm, but I’ll pull something out on a special occasion or when traveling. There’s a gorgeous Armani cashmere wool pea coat that I still wear every winter.
The pea coat and the trench coat alone!
If it were me and I were single I would have tried to take the wronged boyfriend, too.