Jeff lives in a little suburb outside of Chicago called Clarendon Hills.  Last night I got to participate in the village's favorite tradition other than Christmas, called Free Trash Day. 

Every year, Amnesty International picks up donations from the residents of Clarendon Hills, anything they don't want can be left outside with the trash.  This saves tons of money and trouble if you're too lazy and cheap to call Waste Management to take your old furniture away.  But what this means is that people leave a gold mine outside their homes, and all the residents load up their SUVs and trucks to look at everyone else's trash.  If you see something you like, you simply pick it up and take it home.  Sadly, you might have noticed that at some point, Amnesty International has to come by and pick up the leftovers that nobody wanted. 

There are rules to this game, of course.  Residents aren't allowed to put their trash out before sunset, so Free Trash Day only starts at night.  People in the village also have a slight sense of shame, so people try to avoid seeing or making eye contact with others.  Of course, people drive suspiciously in a zig-zag pattern towards piles of trash with their high beams on, so it's pretty obvious what they're doing. 

Here are the highlights from our night:

-finding that some Mexican pawn dealers were rolling through Clarendon Hills with a U-Haul
-Jeff's brother saying "we picked up some towels.....which are unrelated to Free Trash Day"
-seeing that people were actually ripping open trash bags and boxes to look at their contents
-somebody put a table and recliner on top of a dark hill, making it look really creepy.  We added a lamp.

Our take from the night was a couple planks of wood, two boogie boards, and a bike with no chain.  There were tons of plastic chairs, lamps, and children's toys.

BTW, Jeff wanted to roll around and start breaking stuff, but he decided that he would literally be taking stuff away from charity if he did that.