It’s the annual spring clean up in Jefferson City, and people are putting their unwanted items at the bottom of their yards while others drive around, look through the stuff and take what they want. I’ve never gone out treasure hunting, but I do know the joy of finding something wonderful that someone else has discarded. After I graduated from Mizzou, I got a management job with Wal-Mart in Springfield and found myself in a predicament. I had no way of getting all of my worldly possessions from Columbia to Springfield. I called my dad for advice. He asked me what I had, and I told him I had the 15 to 20 year old couch that he and mom had thrown away, the old recliner with rips in it they had thrown away, half a set of bunk beds that they had thrown away and other things that other people had thrown away. He suggested that my worldly possessions weren’t all that worldly and that I should just give them all away. So I called up the Catholic Church, and they sent someone to pick up my stuff.
When I got to Springfield, I slept on an egg crate mattress for the first week and then went to a rummage sale that the Catholic Church was having. I saw a couch there that I just had to have. It was pea green with bright canary yellow cushions. But it wasn’t the beautiful colors that caught my eye; it was the size. It had to have been eight feet long and three feet wide. And oh my, was it comfortable! Then I saw the price tag—two dollars. That was an offer I couldn’t refuse, so I bought it.
Another remarkable thing about the couch was its weight. It was very light, and I was able to pick it up by myself and put it in my car. Well, not all of it. About four feet of the couch fit in the car, and the other four feet hung out the back of the Escort. I can only imagine what a sight it was seeing me driving down the road like that.
I slept on that couch that night and many nights after that. Even after I bought a waterbed, I still slept on the couch. It was that comfortable, and the waterbed was that uncomfortable.
My friend Liz moved to Springfield, and she too was impressed with my couch and offered to buy it from me for four dollars. She told me it would be a one hundred percent profit, but I resisted.
I kept that couch until I got married. We were living in Jefferson City, and my wife, who was not thrilled with the eight foot pea green monstrosity, convinced me we should buy a new one, and the old one was moved to the basement. Soon afterwards, Jefferson City had the annual spring clean up, and the couch went to the bottom of the yard where someone else claimed it. It’s the circle of life or something like that.
I’m Mike Downey, and that’s my two cents.