In the world of antiques, from the pedigreed people to the junk peddlers, France is known as the ‘attic of the world’. For low life scavengers like me, this expression could be twisted into something like, ‘France is the dumpster of the world’; but this just doesn’t have the same ring to it. In any case, France is a paradise for those seeking age old treasures, furniture, building materials, etc., whether you pay for them or find them in the streets for free. As I have said before, there is nothing ignoble or inherently wrong with being a bottom feeder, scrounging in the muck at the very bottom of the food chain. Whereas some fine feathered folks do not like getting their hands dirty and prefer buying their old furniture and such in pedigreed places where the lighting is nice and the sales people with soft hands wear coats and ties on, scavengers prefer dealing with the elements and finding things in a natural state. The grimier the goods, the cheaper they are. If the goods are in a dumpster or on a sidewalk awaiting the garbage collectors, then you know you cannot lose by taking ownership. Alas, not everyone is prepared to deal with the requirements of the scavenger’s modus operandi, which is somewhat akin to ‘seizing the day’: you must seize the goods without delay, or you risk losing them to the heartless souls dressed in green suits with their lugubrious green garbage trucks (in Paris, anyway). What tragic irony, the guys dressed in the symbolic color of life, ‘green’, are the harbingers of death for old things. Once these guys get a hold of the goods, these items have no more future and you can be assured that these treasures will end their useful lives in the trash heap…a veritable cemetery of wasted value.

Like a good writer or a good photographer, a scavenger has to be ever ready to do the equivalent of noting down an observation or taking an off the cuff photo: he must recognize the potential for scavenging in some of the most unexpected places. When I am away from Paris, I am either at my home in Tours, or I am in the countryside outside of Tours, in my old farmhouse on the banks of the Loire River. There, in my 17th century barn, I keep a large stock of items of all sorts: from wrought iron to old doors, to paneling to stoneware, to furniture, and on and on. We might say that this is where the Parisian Scavenger’s buck stops.

We usually go out to the country house on the weekends when we can get away. At the end of each weekend, we drop off our garbage in the dumpsters in the small riverfront town where our house is located. The dumpsters have been strategically placed right next to the town cemetery so that the garbage trucks and individuals like myself who drop off their garbage, bottles, and junk will not disturb anyone. It is safe to say that no one in the immediate vicinity has ever complained about the noise… or the smell, for that matter. They are all sound asleep. Well wouldn’t you know it? My scavenger’s eagle eye is always attuned to new opportunities and although I would never stoop to being a grave robber (too much shoveling), I do not have any qualms about recuperating items from a dumpster where the goods therein are clearly marked for destruction. Specifically, the people who maintain the graveyard have a dumpster just on the other side of the cemetery wall where they throw all of the faded flowers and dying plants that the bereaved families have left in memory of their loved ones. Think about it…plants, many of them on their last legs, left to die of thirst in a dismal dumpster. Some of them are nice plants, or rather, if nursed back to health, they could become glorious plants once again, being rejuvenated by my tender loving care.

So there you have it, the essence of a scavenger’s mission: providing an opportunity for a new life after certain death has been programmed by heartless souls (or dead souls, as the case may be). All that is required to be a scavenger is the imagination to see how life can be restored to something that has been rejected by others and given up for dead. So is there life after death? You bet…just come see my plants.