My New Answer When Asked Why I Curb Salvage

I could find history!

Like Don Levy, the owner of Deluxe Diner in Watertown (one of Half Pint + Mr. Car's favorite haunts,) who found a suitcase of Hiroshima photos which fill a missing visual piece of history.

. . . .

"...Taken during the weeks following the bombing, they show a landscape that is eerily vacant and quiet, like ruins from a vanished civilization. But why were they taken and by whom? And how is it that they ended up in a pile of garbage?

...The man who found the photographs, Don Levy (no relation) lives and works in Watertown, a working-class suburb of Boston. Levy owns and operates the Deluxe Town Diner. It’s almost two o’clock in the afternoon and the lunch crowd is thinning out. He sits down for the first time that day and tucks into a Reuben sandwich, fries and a glass of water. He is wearing brown corduroy trousers, a dark blue pullover and horn rimmed glasses. His grey hair is cut short, with a fashionable tuft sticking straight up on top.

...'When I opened the suitcase that night I knew what I was looking at almost right away,' he says softly. 'Some of the prints had 'Hiro', short for Hiroshima, written on their edges.' He takes a bite of the sandwich. 'I felt pleased to have found them but at the same time I was saddened by what I was looking at.'

...Levy is a connoisseur of found objects (he’s a collector of vintage metal toys, commercial packaging and fabric sample books, among other things). Finding the photographs was the peak of his trash diving career. But the problem is that he didn’t know what to do with them. They were in terrible shape — some were stuck together, others had been hole-punched and stuffed into binders. One of his customers is an antiques dealer; she recommended putting them in archival sleeves. He did so and then he put them in storage while he concentrated on the more pressing demands of his business ventures and the necessities of putting his six children through school."

. . . .

Amazing. Maybe now I can get some slack from the #1 hater of all trash pickers, Mr. Bobby Crocker.

Comments

[Trinity]

Wow. That is one amazing find. I sometimes think about how cool it would be to able to trace back the history of some thrift store or curb items I have acquired. We just had to repair our couch and in the process dug into its guts a little. Judging by the materials used and the type of construction, we have determined that it is ancient. I'd love to know when it was made and who made and who owned it before me and so on.