back in the day

when I was little we did cool stuff like go treasure hunting. You might have heard of these scores referred to as "road finds" and were a favorite and exciting treat. The treasures were varied and rare, so a find was a pretty big deal. Now don't get me wrong, some things you would find quite a bit of, bingy cords, for instance were not as exciting as most anything else, as you could find about 3 or so on the way home every day. Some things though, were really neat. I once got an Elk Grove Park Pool hoodie sweatshirt that was almost new and super big, like high-schooler size at least (when you are 9 this is a pretty big deal) that I wore almost every day for a really long time. (this was sunny California, so a hoodie was hardly a necessity by the way) There were random coolers, lawn chairs (barely bent or anything), well, you know, stuff that flies out of peoples cars that they don't know about or can't be bothered to stop for. We, on the other hand were known for slamming on the brakes on the freeway at rush hour to check out a mysterious lump in the opposite lane of traffic--usually nothing of interest, but hey, you never could tell. We never went on specific trips to look for these goodies, we just were always on the look out, just in case. I do believe that the sweatshirt was probably the nicest and item of highest value that we ever had the luck of finding. The reason the road finds are on my mind tonight, is that this evening I went to the store and on the way there, there was a stuffed garbage bag sitting in my lane. There were 2 lanes and no other cars, so I casually pulled around it (not even slowing down--I'm trying my best to evolve) but did venture a peek in the rear view--it was filled with what I think were lawn clippings, but it brought back the blue sweatshirt faster than I would have liked to believe it could.
Tonight I would like to raise a toast to all of the weird things our parents put us through that we hated, or embarrassed us, but that now we look back on and giggle (usually with family members that had to endure it right along side of us); and to that 300 mile road trip with my dad after I was an adult, where just for fun, we stopped for every (single, stinking) bingy cord turning the 6 hour trip into a much longer one. Laughs and memories are free, but, as with most things that matter, their value is much higher.
I would not like to raise a toast to the times we went to the dump and stayed to shop....just saying.