“There’s bricks in dem dar piles!”

In total, I ended up making five trips to the demolition site for bricks this weekend.  I delivered a second carload to the Garden Station.  I wish I had a pickup truck.  There was a couple filling raised beds who had a SUV.  For a moment I thought about mentioning it to them.

I dunno.  I thought more people would be crawling all over the site salvaging brick.  There were a couple people scavenging for whatever metal they could find and pile onto their old pickup trucks.  Aluminum gutters, drain pipes, amd iron tubs—including the one I had been offered days ago.

It wasn’t until late in the afternoon someone from the McPherson Town district came over.  There had been an article in the paper about the neighborhood garden the residents had started this year.  Those are the people I thought would be hauling loads of brick away for pathways.

“Here for the free paving material?” I said to the woman getting out of her shiny, red compact car.”  I held two bricks up over my head. 

But she just said no.  And then a couple in a shiny, black SUV came by and they all three went off together to inspect the other properties on site.  I thought it seemed very standoffish.  But then I thought about how I was dressed: sweats, torn t-shirt, painter’s hat and badly in need of a haircut.  Not to mention dirty from crawling around piles of rubble and carrying bricks.
 
I imagine them thinking I was some sort of panhandler or homeless person, more than an environmentally conscientious gardener.  (“Don’t make eye contact, Margaret.  He’ll start asking for change.  Make sure you locked the car!”)

Or maybe I looked like some crazy old prospector type from the movies, loading up my Elantra like a burro.  (“Git away from my bricks.  I claimed ‘em!  This here brick lode’s all mine!  Now git!”)

Oh well.  I also ended up finding a couple good-as-brand-new downspouts, a three foot segment of limestone that I’ll use as a mini-pillar to mark the beginning of my garden path and a portion of rusted wire fencing that I’ll use as a trellis for my clematis.