By Clyde

Is it worth it? Just look in your wastebasket.

“If I rejoiced because my wealth was great and because mine hand had gotten much.” Job 31:25. In a recent citywide clean-up, a mid-century modern original painting was found curb-side in the historic district.

It may be worth thousands on eBay, but with all the down-sizing and scale-down apartments how do you decide what to keep? Some picker boys keep it all in tractor-trailers or on pallets covered with plastic. Would-be hoarders keep every little piece of their life’s jigsaw puzzle. One man’s garbage can be another man’s treasure. Third-world countries survive on refuse, some even imported. Twice broken does not mean throw it in the gully. Lloyd Morris could fix it. Some people can even see beauty in debris. Recycle, the word first used in 1922, has not taught us what to feed the blue bin.

Whoever thought we would have to pay to get rid of something we didn’t want to start with? Why pay three times: a tax to buy it, a fee to sort it and another charge to pick it up. Lane is smarter than you think. Gently used hand-me-downs were a badge of thriftiness. In school on a slow day, we made art out of the trash and called it collage.

Pocketbooks were called decoupage and fine art in snooty galleries was labeled assemblage.

We looked with 350 tons per day coming to our plastic liners, Caleb, our county landfill man, figures that’s equal to the EPA average of 5 pounds per person. He says plastic bags in plastic-lined dry storage is still better than incineration, which we all did in the backyard barrel.

“Neither cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under feet, and turn again and rend you” Matt. 7:6. Don’t throw your life away, you might need it. With just our 700,000 pounds per day, you would think there would be nothing left to toss. If we keep on, it is enough to make the earth tilt on its axis because of all the extra weight. That’s all right, the new coastline would be in Hamlet and it would boost their broken economy. Worthwhile people are irreplaceable.

Have you noticed lately large scale loads of litter literally left lying listlessly languishing in labyrinthic lanes where legendary lazy loser let loathsome la-di-das label it too laborious and licentious to lift a limb to alleviate? How can we profit from litter?

We learned to save. As early as 1808 when John Steele agreed to sent John Murphy from Fayetteville as cashier with fire wagons, an iron chest, banknotes and supplies to the corner of Innes and Clay streets for a bank where he slept in a room with the iron chest, chained to the floor. Archibald Henderson and Lewis Beard were on the board of directors.

The State Bank of N.C. was established in 1811 with Richard Trotter as president and Joseph Chambers as the first cashier. Built in 1817, a “fine Brick House is now building” on lot No. 5, the Salisbury branch of the Cape Fear was on the corner of “Bank” and Corbin (South Main) until the war.

Oddly enough, Confederate money is now worth face value or more, thanks to collectors. They shall know them by their fruits. Your throwaway polystyrene is 95% hot air.

So, call before you dig and think before you throw. It may be worth keeping.

Clyde lives in Salisbury.