Trashball 053007: Milo's Tooth: The Sequel

Well, it was inevitable. Milo the cat has lost his other top-row front canine tooth (here's the first one to go). I found this one on my comfy green chair, where Milo often sleeps and loses teeth. And yes, this tooth will fit in a Trashball.

Trashball 052807: Treatise on Style

The Chinese have long been the best in package design, as far as I'm concerned. Recovered on the 1000 block of 4th St., NE, in DC.

Have You Always Wanted a Trashball, But Were Afraid to Ask?

Well, for those of you not in DC and therefore nowhere near a Trashball machine, you can now get your very own Trashballs. Send $3.00 via paypal.com (click here) and I'll send you 4 randomly chosen Trashballs via 1st-class mail (that's the regular price of 25 cents plus $2.00 postage/handling). This is for U.S. residents only. International coveters of Trashballs should email me first at chris [at] goodwinart [dot] com and we'll work something out.

Trashball 051807: Paradise Lost

Okay, so nothing is paradise. But sometimes I really miss being a kid.

Recovered in Alexandria, VA.

Trashball in the News: CNBC

My first live TV interview and I figured I'd be in a fancy green room, plied with tasty catered foods while getting made up. Hell no. Just a humorless cameraman and me under hot lights.

Trashball 051407: Larry's a Stinker

Diary entries from a circa 1969 sorority pledge. States that pledges must always carry, among other things, a "passafire", by which I think she means pacifier. And after reading a lot of entries not posted, it's clear that "Larry" is acting like a total jerk to her and she should totally break up with him. Recovered in Fairfax, VA.

Trashball 051107: Lamb Sandwich

This luridly photographed lamb repels me yet makes me hungry. Recovered from 33rd St., NW, in DC.

Trashball 050607: Early Warhol

Nice vintage Davy Crockett shirt. Recovered in Laurel, MD.

Trashball 050607: That's Gotta Hoit (Say in Jimmy Durante Voice)

Recovered on U St., NW, in Washington, DC.

Trashball 050507: We Are the Champions

History, as written by the victors.

Trashball 050507: Can't Touch This

Say hello to Diondre, Benn, and Cookie, as they are labeled on the back of this 1986 photo I recovered on Minnesota Avenue in D.C. The fellow on the right menaces the viewer with a half-peeled orange.

How About Some Down-Home Lard 'n Butter?

Yesterday's job on the dump truck was an all-day affair. We were charged with emptying a house in Fairfax, Virginia, that had been abandoned 8 years ago and unoccupied since. It's as if, one day in 1999, the person had left to go out for a pack of smokes and never came back. The house was fully furnished, the closets full of clothes, and the refrigerator and upright freezer fully stocked.

Mind you, the fridge and freezer had not been opened in 8 years and had not run for who knows how long. Guess who got to open them up and clean them out?

You may wonder why we didn't simply tape the doors shut and dump the fridges with the contents in them. We would have loved to; alas, the dump has a special drop-off point for fridges and requires them to be empty.

My wishful theory that dead and rotten things eventually stop smelling proved off-base. Sickeningly so. The odor that burst forth and infiltrated our nostrils and pores was shocking.

Still, the freezer in particular yielded up interesting things, and I'm not referring to the half-eaten leg of lamb (I think it was). Inside were old plastic containers containing leftovers that had been helpfully labeled with contents and dates. There was chopped basil from April 30, 1982. Eggplant parmesan from 1979 (even if the house was abandoned in 1999, how could these things have been left in for so long?!). There were probably 2 dozen of these containers in all, spanning many years but nothing later than 1984. The 1977 containers of lard are pictured above, as is the stick of butter found in the fridge. The butter, by the way, had become very light and papery and felt hollow. That said, it was not too bad spread on toast.

Trashball 050207: Mayday Mayday

Oddly enough, I found this slip of paper on May Day, among a large, malodorous pile of bagged and loose trash in an alley behind Swann St., NW, in D.C. What struck me about it at first was the idea of filling out a form while plunging to your death in a P-3C Orion. Then it occurred to me that such a form was probably taped up near the radioman so he could follow a script in the case of a mayday situash. I think it's poignant that they refer to the crew members as "souls", as seen in the line "______ SOULS ON BOARD".

Trashball Jumble

All recovered from defaulted storage unit on U St., NW, in Washington, DC. I think Mrs. Fulcher's catsup recipe could be the one I've been looking for.

Trashball in the News: New York Times

Quick! Read it before they lock it up behind their pay-per-view archive. And I must also say that I am much better looking than I appear in that picture—it looks like a cigar just blew up in my face. Dang.

Trashball 042607: Outburst of Looting

Cryptic note written on old Greenpeace biz card recovered on U St., NW, in Washington, DC. Is this some sort of clue?

Trashball 042607: Dammit Doll

Label recovered in an abandoned storage unit in Washington, DC, that was presumably affixed to an abused doll of some kind.

Trashball 042607: Damn You, Ermal Cleon Fraze!

According to this article, the beverage can pulltab was nearly completely replaced by the staytab by the early 1980s, yet I can't walk down the street without seeing one of these on the ground. The throw-away pull tab was invented in my hometown, Dayton, Ohio (known as the "Home of Invention"), in 1959 by Ermal Cleon Fraze, whose name simply dazzles.

Trashball 041407: If You Lived in Leningrad, You'd Be Home Now

1970s-era Soviet propaganda (in handy booklet form!). Recovered in tony Chevy Chase, MD, enclave of wealthy capitalists.

Trashball 041407: Something the Tooth Fairy Forgot

Two wisdom teeth recovered in Chevy Chase, MD. Gross and creepy to hold in hand. And look how long the roots are!

Trashball 041407: Happy Fly!

Circa 1975 Soviet airline passenger instruction manual. Recovered in Chevy Chase, MD.

Trashball 041107: Mamma Asteroid

Recovered from an old telescope case in Mt. Pleasant, DC.

Have You Always Wanted a Trashball, But Were Afraid to Ask?

Well, for those of you not in DC and therefore nowhere near a Trashball machine, you can now get your very own Trashballs. Send $6.00 via paypal.com (click here) and I'll send you 5 randomly chosen Trashballs via 1st-class mail. This is for U.S. residents only. International coveters of Trashballs should email me first at chris [at] goodwinart [dot] com and we'll work something out.

Trashball 040707: Afrolicious

Very cool copyright-1970 Black Pride doll recovered in 16th St. Heights neighborhood in Washington, DC.

Trashball 040707: Who Doesn't Love Stockings?

And check out those eyelashes! Nice vintage pair of stockings recovered near Richmond, VA.

Trashball 040707: Doggie Bag

Man, when I was a kid, I used to LOVE it when the parents brought home a doggie bag from Old Hickory BBQ or the fancy King Cole restaurant in Dayton, Ohio. Why don't restaurants use these anymore? The styrene clamshell is BORING.

Recovered in Dayton.

Trashball in the News: BBC

Nice article featuring photos of a tubby Mr. Goodwin.

Trashball 040407: "You should have heard the screams..."

I have fond but dim memories of driving to Florida in the 1970s and staying in oceanfront motels, but I still want to take such a trip in the 1950s. Don't think it's going to happen except vicariously through cards like this. Click on image to read it.

Recovered in Hyattsville, MD.

Trashball 040107: Motorway Accident

Bizzarely exposed snapshot marked August 1983 on back. Appears to be 2 cars and a bus on the left, and a red compact on the right, but they were clearly not in the same frame. Person in foreground is a ghostly apparition.

Recovered in Alexandria, VA.

Trashball 040107: Stovealicious

I dig me that stove. Cute kid. Circa 1955.
Recovered in Laurel, MD.

Trashball 040107: Dear Prospect

I have no idea who the recipient of this 1969 letter was, but I'm curious how life turned out for him. And were the Seattle Supersonics any good back then?

Recovered in Laurel, MD.

TREAT Now Serving Up Delicious Fashions

My wife and I finally launch our online store featuring her fashions today, and this ain't no April Fool's joke. Take a gander!

Trashball 032807: Caribbean Cruise, 1968

Bored-looking white folk in background.

Recovered in Laurel, MD.

Trashball 032807: 1953

The dollar, it seems, used to go pretty far, as these two 1953 receipts bear out. "Charms 3 Boxes" for a mere $1.78 at the People's Drug Store and a full month of newspapers—delivered, no less—for the trifling sum of $1.40.

Recovered in Washington, DC.

Trashball 032607: Baby Boy

Recovered in Laurel, MD.

Trashball 032607: Breaking News, 1981

Four snapshots someone took of their TV screen. The images are pretty familiar, especially to me since I drive past that wall in the background all the time. It's the T Street entrance of the Washington Hilton, site of John Hinckley's assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan.

Why didn't the picture-taker just use YouTube? Oh, right...

Recovered in Laurel, MD.

Unpleasant Memory No. 23: Auto-Micturition

The street I grew up on, well, it wasn't really a street. It was a boulevard. By the age of 11 or so I had come to realize that "boulevard" had a certain cachet, a kind of European flair, that "street" lacked.
And, indeed, it was no ordinary street; down the middle of Springbrook Boulevard, in Dayton, Ohio, ran the eponymous brook, a quietly burbling little stream through which my friends and I would wade, upsetting rocks and catching crawdads. (In case you're confused, the brook did not literally run down the middle of the street; the roadway was a long oval bisected by a strip of grass and trees, through which the creek ran.)
Unusual people lived along my part of the boulevard. Everyone's neighbors are strange or funny or mysterious to a degree, but my little stretch seemed particularly endowed with odd birds.
Across the street lived the twins, Holly and Heidi, and their mother, whose obsession with Elvis was unsettling.
Down from them lived Mrs. Hough and her son. Mrs. Hough could be relied upon for two things: Little Debbie oatmeal-creme cookies, if you knocked and asked nicely; and, every so often--but without fail--she would back her car out of her driveway, forget to turn the steering wheel, go down the embankment, and into the creek.
Directly next door to my house was Mr. and Mrs. Stover, a nice elderly couple who had a little vegetable garden that was always set upon by rabbits, no matter their efforts to keep them out. Mrs. Stover will never be forgotten for her unabashed snooping; it was highly unusual to be out in the driveway and not find her peering through the blinds, staring fixedly at you. You could make eye contact with her and her gaze would not waver nor her blank expression change.
Anyhow, one day, around 8 or 9 years of age, I was playing with the twins in the creek. It was summer, one of those elemental summer days that seem, when looking back as an adult, to be made of green leaves, blue sky, fluffy white clouds, yellow sun.
I suppose we were looking for crawdads (crayfish, to some of you). We may have been digging up the occasional car part, too; every so often you'd come across a side mirror or bit of tail-light from one of Mrs. Hough's depth-perception errors.
It was getting close to dinnertime. I knew I'd soon have to go in, but I really didn't want to. I wanted to stay out there, feeling my bare feet on the slippery, moss-covered rocks and teasing the twins, whose sole similarity to each other was that they both lisped.
For some time, though, I had really had to pee. But I didn't want to run into my house, worried that my parents would induce me to stay in. I didn't want to go into Holly and Heidi's place, either, because I found their mother rather terrifying, with her enormous hair and makeup so heavy that it seemed to make her face sag. Plus, I knew she'd want to show me some of her latest Elvis kitsch.
The situation was getting truly desperate though. I was at the point where I had to pee so bad that I got that strange tingly feeling in my molars; where I was unconsciously reaching down and squeezing the end of my ding-a-ling to hold it in; where I could think of nothing but peeing; and where, moreover, I was surrounded by the sound of running water.
I could take it no more. I quickly hopped and jumped over to where a tree grew out of the bank, hoping it would provide adequate cover from the girls, and further hoping that they hadn't noticed my distress. I was wearing shorts with an elastic waist. As I started to pull the front down, I furtively looked over to make sure I was unseen; at the same time as I pulled the front of my shorts down with my right hand, I was grabbing onto my dilly-ho-ho with my left hand. Something went wrong.
I immediately started peeing all over myself, starting with my face and, more specifically, my nostrils and eyes. So overcome had I been with joy at the prospect of imminent relief that my bladder had preceded my having fully gotten my wee willy winky out and pointed safely away from my body.
Shocked by the sting of urine in my eyes and, believe it or not, my sinuses, I started falling backward, and made quite a splash in every sense of the word. I never fell completely down, but my ruckus had attracted the attention of Heidi and Holly, who stood transfixed as I wrestled with myself, for the flow continued unabated and I still had not fully released my petit jesu from my shorts.
After several hours of this, it finally stopped. The twins, naturally, were howling with laughter. Mrs. Stover had probably gotten an eye-full, too (although not in the same way I had). I clambered up the bank, utterly humiliated and now quite ready to go in. I managed to get inside the house without my parents seeing me and asking me embarrassing questions I did not wish to answer.

NPR Interview

Liane Hansen, host of Weekend Edition Sunday on NPR, heard about Trashball and was nice enough to do a short piece about it today on her show. You can listen to it here.

Trashball 032507: South Dakota Knights Templar—They Run the World

Recovered from a circa 1895 steamer trunk, these cards identify the bearer as a Knight Templar and Royal Arch Mason in good standing with the Chamberlain, South Dakota, Chapter No. 32. This chapter, as is commonly known, was among the most feared in Brule County, and is thought to have played the chief role in instigating the infamous Barley Riots that took place in Chamberlain on May 12, 1923, from 4:45 pm to 5:02 pm. Only a loud and impatient whistle from a passing constable brought the situation under control.

Trashball 032407: Close Call

This tag came from the seatbottom of one of three fairly unremarkable-looking chairs that I was prepared to take to the dump. Fortunately, my friend Bill indentified the chairs as desirable bent-plywood Thonet chairs from the 1950s, and they'll be auctioned soon. I love the old Maryland Department of Health stamp that was applied to the tag.

Trashball 032307: Poetaster II

A terrible bit of blank verse written on the back of a pink "While You Were Out" slip (incidentally, do they even make those anymore in the age of voicemail?). Given that it is signed "Love always, Michael", it's pretty hilarious that he clearly was confused on the spelling of the name of the unfortunate girl he wrote it for. Here now, is the poem:

A vision
comes

with peace

through thought

from the third eye

out the mouth

to my ears

and pushes me

further

towards

Nirvana.

Yechh. The large indent before "Nirvana" really grates. Michael strikes me as the earnest type of sensitive fellow who date-rapes passed out girls at Phish concerts.

Don't remember where I found this.

Trashball 032307: Entitles the Bearer to Be Lame

This is a lame-ass hall pass. It's a product, I think, of the namby-pamby modern practice of treating all children as "winners". Why else would this bathroom pass imply that the bearer is a "star" and be garnished with crappy celebratory graphics? In my day (did I really just write that?), a bathroom pass was a chalkboard-eraser-sized block of wood with the word "PASS" written on it in magic marker. And it got the job done.

Recovered in the LeDroit Park neighborhood of Washington, DC.

Trashball 032207: That's a Good Boy, or Release the Hounds

The last thing the shutterbug saw before being torn to shreds? Really terrific old snapshot recovered from a shoebox in Mt. Rainier, MD. I worry for the photographer/intruder. Hope she got rabies shots just to be safe.

Trashball Apparel

Yes, Trashball is hard. It's labor intensive and each little ball only nets me 25 of your Earth cents. That's why I invite you to help support Trashball by checking out my t-shirts and other novelties. Some shirts, like those above, feature bits of Trashball ephemera. Others feature my art (www.goodwinart.com) and politics.

Trashball 032107: This Little Piggy Went to the Crusher

Recovered from circa 1970 toy chest in Gaithersburg, MD. Gave me a bit of a scare at first.