Steve Hlavinka WR115 Essay #2

Steve Hlavinka WR115 Essay #2

Word Count 936

May 25, 2011

Waste Not, Want Not

My father was born and raised in the Midwest. He worked hard all his life and usually worked a second job or business, in addition to his regular job. He had a strong sense of value for goods and services and an honest day‟s work. I think growing up in the „30s and „40s instilled these values upon him. During that time, waste was a luxury few could afford or consider.

Today, we have become a “throw-away” society. Most of our commodities are considered out of style or obsolete long before they are broken or worn out. Many of our manufactured goods are not made to be durable or to be efficiently repaired. Although we are making some progress in recycling efforts, our waste continues to mount.

As I was growing up, one of the second businesses my father developed was dismantling old buildings for salvage. On the weekends and during the summer months, I would work with him on some of the buildings. It was always dirty and usually hot work, but there was a fascination about getting to see how something was built and the possibility that some wondrous treasure might be discovered along the way. I won‟t lie; in my youthful exuberance, the possibility of treasure and potential for earning extra spending money were probably the bigger draws, but the anxious anticipation of what lay hidden under layers of lath and plaster or behind the next wall was also present.

We tried to salvage most building materials and basically anything that could be reasonably re-used. This included doors, windows, light fixtures, tubs, and yes, even kitchen sinks. The quality of the lumber that went into these older buildings was usually on a scale far superior to present day standards. Perhaps it was cut from old growth or cut at a time when there was a deeper sense of pride in the quality of work and product one produced. At any rate, it was a stark contrast. Other items, that were too old and outdated to be safely reused, were sold for scrap. Generally, the insulation, roofing, lath, plaster, and the concrete debris were the only waste materials generated from the operation.

The grandest challenge to our salvage operation came in the form of a large church. Compared to the buildings, previously dismantled, this was the “Spruce Goose.” Its shear size and elegance seemed overwhelming. Unfortunately, this ninety year old church was standing in the way of progress. I guess it is true what they say about property value, “location is everything.” A super-market chain had built a store next door and eventually the time came for additional parking space. At my young and naive age, this seemed like a waste of a perfectly good church.

This church had been an important part of the community and there was a concerted effort to try to save it, but no reprieve came. The property sale went through and my father was awarded the contract to remove the building within a specified time frame. While similar to salvage operations before it, this one was different; this one was special. The church bell was carefully removed and trucked to its new home, as were the pews and most of the breathtakingly beautiful stained glass windows. The spirit of this grand old church was allowed to live on in another, like some cosmic heart transplant. The lumber was sold off to the multitudes to live on as home additions, sheds, garages, and numerous other carpentry projects. I think my father‟s standing in the community and reverence and respect he showed toward the grand old church helped the community recover from the initial loss.

Today, it seems there is less time for such delicate matters. A building is stripped of its internal organs and then imploded; any scrap that can be easily salvaged is collected and sold. The rest of the rubble becomes land fill. Our senseless waste is not confined to building materials; it carries over into all material things to one degree or another.

In Lars Eighner‟s essay, “On Dumpster Diving,” he writes on his experience living as a homeless person and surviving on materials thrown away by others. He “scavenges” an amazing array of perfectly good and useable items, including food, which helps him through this difficult time. He explains that being able to eat from a dumpster is what separates the novice from the expert dumpster diver, but that getting dysentery from something you ate is a serious drawback to this way of life. Eighner acknowledges several meaningful lessons from his scavenging experiences: “The first is to take what I can use and let the rest go. … The second lesson is the transience of material being” (593). He reflects on the value most of us place on material things, and yet how those same “precious” things can be so readily discarded or deemed valueless to another.

We generate an incredible amount of waste and it continues to grow. When I see the extent of our wastefulness and the impact it has on our society, I am angered and disappointed at the same time, and yet I am an active member of that wasteful mass. Perhaps that anger and disappointment should be directed at me. Perhaps each of us needs to take the initiative to set a good example. Maybe then, we can all improve together.

Works Cited

Eighner, Lars. “On Dumpster Diving.”

Models for Writers. Ed. Alfred Rosa and Paul Eschholz 10th edition. Boston:Bedford, 2010. 591-593

Mikal Smeltzer

May 23, 2010

WR 115 @ 12

Essay #2- Response Word Count - 1046

Home is Where the Heart Feels Happy

Can you imagine a trailer house that is sixty feet long and ten feet wide? The outside is mostly white with a blue stripe around the top and a blue stripe around the bottom. The trail is old, circa the 1950’s. The mold has taken over the outside making the blue and white color more of a greenish black. It has been stabilized with sixteen cinder blocks and still remains on its tires. Some plywood, some lattice and a small green tarp are attached around the front door to provide a porch as shelter from the rain. Fortunately the trailer has one of the only fenced in yards in the court, which gives the trailer an extra oomph. All the neighbors are located within ten feet of the fuzzy molded trailer. Quite literally if someone flushes their toilet or their heater comes on anyone inside the trailer next door can hear it. With the trailer getting older by the second and the lack of privacy that is expected would you want to live there?

I didn’t have much of a choice when I moved to Albany but to live there. I flew in from Denver, Colorado to live with a cousin of a friend and take some well needed time to start my life over in a new town. Upon arriving to Albany my new roommate took me “home,” which was an eighteen foot camp trailer. It seemed to me at that time, that I had arrived in hell and had no means in which to run away. Shortly after I moved into the camper, the trailer house next door became for sale. I pounced on the deal and bought myself a real home to live. When the keys were handed over there were a lot of left over’s in the house. I spent three days cleaning and throwing junk away to peel back the layer of inhabitance only to reveal more things that needed to be cleaned. My new home may not have been what I dreamed of but it was what I needed and it worked.

Now that it has been three years and I have grown an attachment to my home. It is still a moldy blue and white trailer on the outside but when you walk in the door you know that it is dearly loved. All the walls on the inside I have painted; the kitchen has green and white checkered wall paper, the bathroom (which has been completely remodeled) is covered in Sponge Bob-Square Pants, and both bedrooms are decorated according to who is living in them. The living room has been furnished with red velvet furniture, matching curtains and a lovely little book shelf that now bares books read, books to be read, and college school work that has been completed in neat little binders. My home emits a welcoming vibe that is held back by the outside.

Before you get to the modernized inside of my home you have to get past the stereotypical uneasy feeling that surrounds the outside of my home. The trailer court that my home is located within is a perfect image for the description of the phrase “white-trash trailer park.” There is not an abundance of issues with people in my trailer court it just so happens that most of the people living here have homes that look like mine and in 2010 a lot full of 1950’s trailer homes and R.V.s are seen as out of date and “white trash.” I have accepted this as a strong young adult that can say, “I own my home.” When I look at my home (as I wish others would) I see a dinky little trailer that becomes a magnificently beautiful little cottage once I walk in the door.

A short time ago I was reading an essay by Meghan Daum called “My House: Plain and Fantasy,” that reminded me of the way I love my house by viewing the inside and not the outside. Daum admired the house which she lived in as it was an old bungalow that sat on some property in Nebraska. When she looked at her small bungalow she could see her “fantasy house” which she imagined as an elegantly designed (farm house) inside and out with a “cupola” that you can see twenty miles in every direction from. Her real house was really just a disarray of broken appliances, decaying walls, and a terrifying basement. Daum wrote “Still, it’s a great step. All things considered, my house is a showplace,” referring to the all the land surrounding her humble home which is beautiful and lushly flourished by nature. Her house need not be perfect. Living and sharing the chores with her “significant other” made her shabby house feel like a glorious home. Daum spent the majority of her time in her office, which had become the place to store all junk from college, and the rest of her time was spent doing chores or cooking. Having her “cupola” would allow her to enjoy the surrounding nature even while sitting down to eat or in her office. No matter where she might move or where she had lived before that little shabby bungalow would always be her first real home.

Just as easy as that, this moldy trailer I live in will always be my first real home. I share my trailerwith my brother, whose presence I would be in great despair without. We make our home function smoothly and really enjoy each other’s company. I too, much like Daum, will move one day away from my home but will always carry around the memories of time spent here. I do hope that when the day comes for me to leave that I will have the strength not to take the things that will visually remind me of living in my trailer home such as, the bathroom sink, the silly light fixtures in the living room, and special design heater vent cover in the kitchen. A goofy handful of things I know, but you love what you love and I love being able to find beauty in something ugly like a “white trash” trailer or a shabby bungalow.