Junk Parade

We're all familiar with the phenomena. One day each year everyone throws some junk on their lawn and the city comes by and takes it away. An old sofa, that stereo from 1986 that hasn't worked for years, the fiberboard desk from Walmart that inevitably disintegrated within 6 months. I though I knew what this was about...until now.

Aucklanders, at least in Otahuhu, fully embrace this tradition like it's their one and only birth right. As if Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout would not take the garbage out for an entire year and then just pushed it out the front door one morning. In one pile I counted 3 sofas. 8 televisions in another. One included a mountain of 14 old commercial airline seats, still connected in pairs, and still with the tacky fabric with orange stripe down the center. Children go missing, lost in the junk piles. Stray animals discover palaces.

I walked by a house for sale with a large realtor's sign out front. You could almost see the corner of the sign sticking up through their ceremonial rubbish heap. Something tells me their curb appeal wasn't attracting potentials buyers today.

I'm happy to report that Heap Shit On Your Lawn Day is in full force in this neighborhood. Somehow I feel left out. I can still see all of our grass.