Joanne Sherman’s column: Picky, picky, picky

Picking has been a hot topic. Picking, as defined in Joanne’s dictionary: The act of picking up treasures from other people’s discards.

On Shelter Island we have Goodie Pile pickers and construction-and-demolition pickers. Unfortunately, the latter group is in picker’s limbo right now, waiting for things to get back to normal. Or not. But this is about Goodie Pile picking.

Barbara Mandrall sang, “I was country when country wasn’t cool.” Sorry Barbie, the original quote is: “I was a picker before picking was cool.” Those words were first spoken maybe three or four generations ago, right here on Shelter Island.

Way back when — in the last century — pickers didn’t have the luxury of a fancy-schmancy, covered Goodie Pile with tables and hangers and shelves. We had a curb alongside a dump truck. Hardly anybody recycled, so everything got tossed into a trash bag and lugged to the dump truck, parked at the dump.

But if a discard was still usable — such as moderately worn out Birkenstocks or an avocado toaster or an 8-track player with a Partridge Family cassette stuck inside — we’d place it on the curb, which we called “the treasure ledge,” giving birth to that oft-quoted saying, “One man’s junk is another man’s treasure.” (Interesting how everything good and/or worth quoting started here on Shelter Island.)

Since then, the treasure ledge morphed into the Taj Mahal of a Goodie Pile, a picker’s paradise, and I’m there weekly to check on the pickin’s. But, in addition to being a frequent picker, I had a brief fling as a dumpster diver.

“You can find new items in the dumpsters behind big shops,” I was told by a visiting relative, who convinced me to scout out the dumpsters in Riverhead.

Sadly, Riverhead stores discourage diving by fully enclosing their dumpsters so that you can not get into them. We tried. Who knew they had cameras! That failed  experience soured me on dumpster diving, not that I ever intended to go back to Hobby Lobby, anyhow.

Though I flunked dumpster diving, I’ve been more successful at garbage picking. Specifically, Post Office-garbage picking. I did it for shampoo. One day, every Island postal patron’s box contained a postcard with a packet of high-end shampoo attached to it.

Who doesn’t love free shampoo? Not the bald guy who tossed his into the trash. I tried to grab it, but it was just out of reach. Thinking fast — because I used to do that back then — I threw my keys into the can.

The kind, bald patron tilted it for me, so I could grab my keys along with his discarded shampoo and three others. That gave me a total of five and just like that, I was hooked on shampoos.

All day I staked out both Post Offices, making hourly visits, where I loitered, memorizing the FBI’s most wanted pictures so I didn’t look suspicious while waiting for the lobby to clear so I could scrounge through the can without an audience.

The later it got, the ickier the can’s contents. The signs said “paper only” so of course, people emptied ashtrays into it, tossed in half-filled cans of orange Shasta, dirty diapers and what smelled like the remains of the previous day’s onion and liverwurst sandwich.

Or maybe that was the diaper. But it was worth the stink, because I collected more than 100 shampoos, and all it cost me was $40 worth of gas driving between 11964 and 11965, and what was left of an already-tarnished reputation.

Nevertheless, it was certainly a great haul, even by professional picker’s standards, but then I have always had uncanny picker’s luck.

My prized Goodie Pile pick was a broken lamp. Not just any lamp. This lamp had a statue of a slightly-chipped gold man holding a bowling ball and a plaque that read: “Louie’s Clippers, First Place.” It was a trophy lamp, special to me for two reasons. One, I needed a lamp, and two, the year the Clippers won, my bowling team took first place in the women’s league, but we opted for $38 cash instead of a trophy.

I added a fringy shade to the lamp, put a pink tutu on the chipped bowler and painted his ball purple. It blended beautifully with my style of upscale decor.

After about six years, I returned it to the Goodie Pile and paused to examine a pair of moderately worn out Birkenstocks; when I looked up the lamp was gone, grabbed by a picker with my eclectic taste!

That day I walked away without the Birkenstocks, just as I did in the last century at the “treasure ledge.” You’ve heard the saying, “Beggars can’t be choosers.” Know the author? Me neither, but how about, “Pickers can be choosers!”

Remember that. You heard it here first.