There is a sport, common to the South, that I feel does not receive nearly as much recognition as it deserves. It does not require expensive equipment, but what it does require is mostly self-providing.

People, I’m talking about Dumpster Diving for fun and profit.

You’ve probably all seen some otherwise fastidious citizen standing head and shoulder deep above the rim of a roadside dumpster. Sometimes they may still be in their church closthes. There is treasure down there! Dishes and furniture amidst that flotsam and jetsam, good enough for any company that you may wish to discourage.

I once found a Lazyboy recliner with just one small, easily-repaired hole in it among the scattered coffee stains. (At least I hope it was coffee.)

Down at an especially productive site, affectionately known as the Askew Walmart, I found a fresh bottle of bourbon, a valid hunting license along with the first draft of a Dear John letter to a hunter-husband.

It is a dandy sport, but it is as addictive as morphine. My doctor recommended D.D. as a form of physical therapy after I misjudged a landing approach and broke my neck. (Didn’t do much for that old Harley I was piloting, either.)

One of my favorite finds was a loaded and rusty cap and ball revolver (cal. 45) with only two rounds fired out of it. Restoring that firearm was tricky business. Safely unloading it was even trickier. I dropped it into a bucket of diesel fuel for a month or two, taking it out and whopping it from time to time with a wooden mallet that I found behind a lawyer’s office in Charleston. I suspect somebody figured out a new gavel might dispense a better brand of justice and pinched it from a courthouse somewhere, but one man’s trash is another man’s treasure and I love treasure.

Well, now comes the conundrum. You see, all of the “letters” that I have been sending to this newspaper have been drafted on a child’s green notebook chanced upon at a dig near Sardis. Now there are only two pages left in the notebook. The child’s name was Courtney, and she was neat and meticulous in her work. She had been at one time a student in the fourth grade somewhere.

Now, John Howell or somebody at The Panolian would probably spring for a new notebook, just for the sake of the confusion it might cause. But it wouldn’t be the same. I’m not superstitious, but I believe in bad luck.

Perhaps Courtney, whoever or wherever she is, would come by The Panolian and autograph the new one. First name only, like the old one, and perhaps scribble a few homework assignments on the first 14 pages, just lie the  old one.

I sure would appreciate it, darlin.’

Temporarily discombobulated,

Ricky Harpole