The Howland house and the ultimate dumpster dive!

I woke up that next morning at Tasha's mom's house in Lansing Michigan. Lansing was one of those small college towns that seemed typical of the midwest. Home to Michigan State University and where Tasha had grown up. It was divided into two parts, downtown Lansing, where you could find the capitol building and not much else, and East Lansing, where you could find the MSU campus in the middle an entire neighborhood of fraternity and sorority houses.

Fortuneately to combat the huge amount of college kid clones dominating the local culture was the Howland house, Lansing's only independent co-op. An old four story victorian house, it was home to most of Lansing's punk community and I instantly felt at home as I set foot on it's steps.

Two blocks away was the Spartan's Spirits Liquor store, a panhandler-friendly establishment where we could shake down the local college kids for money. Next door was the best eats in town, a mexican restaurant called El Azteca. For a dollar you could get what was called a "Freeber", a fairly sizable burrito with cheese and onions. And between the hours of 12 and 4 pm, they threw in a free basket of chips. It was the best deal in town.

Freeber action was always the first priority of the day.

I spent the next few days with the rest of the Howland house crowd hanging out on the porch drinking beers and yelling obscenities at the rich college kids walking by. I took to everyone there quickly, and soon found myself surfing the living room couch with a few of the other local homeless kids. I always tried to do my part though by helping clean the house and helping renovate people's rooms.

When we weren't getting billigerent with the rest of the East Lansing crew on that porch, Tasha, Starr and myself would cruise around the city late at night, dumpstering with a tenacity that could be only mustered by people that had a passion for trash.

This had been an interesting night in particular, as a medical supply store had provided us with quite a few items that we felt would be better put to use being donated to a local free clinic rather than lying in a dumpster. The funniest of which was two baby dolls connected to portable suitcases used for training people in CPR.

The dumpster gods would smile on us once again that night as we drove by a local blockbuster video. Seeing the blue and yellow sign in the distance I said, "Let's check there." I remembered a story from a book I had read called Evasion about finding a lot of video games at blockbuster and in turn selling them at the local pawn shop for cash. I had checked several blockbuster dumpsters since, only to discover cardboard and empty video cassette cases. But it couldn't hurt to check...

Tasha pulled the car into the parking lot and stopped next to the dumpster. I had an odd feeling of excitement as we lifted the black lid of the green container. Tasha felt around inside the black void... the black plastic of hefty garbage bags coming to life. It was full. Almost to the brim. I could hear the words "no way..." reverberate in the back of my mind as Tasha clawed a hole through the garbage bag.

It was full of VHS tapes... all still in shrinkwrap.

We couldn't believe it. I felt around in the bag. Yep, nothing but videos. I hefted the bag out of the container while Tasha ripped open the next hefty bag.

More videos.

And more, and more, and the process continued until we had used every inch of available space in the trunk and back seats of the car. I had to roll up the back windows to keep the videos from falling out. And there was still a few bags left. "Oh my god... we're going to have to make a second trip!" Tasha laughed.

As we were getting ready to leave a blockbuster employee came walking toward the dumpster with two more bags. "What are you guys doing?" she asked. Tasha explained how we found the videos in the dumpster and asked if it was okay if we took them. "I don't care personally, just as long as you guys don't make a mess," she replied and handed us the two bags she was carrying!

"Why would you guys throw away all these videos?" asked Tasha.

"Our store area manager called saying we had to get rid of all the overstock. What we can't sell we have to throw away."

"That's ridiculous! Couldn't they be donated to a shelter or goodwill or something?"

"Unfortunately that's not up to me... but have fun with those videos guys," she replied.

"Um... do you like... want a bag or two?" Tasha offered.

"I'm not allowed... my boss would have a field day with me, but thanks anyways," and walked back to the store. Stupid capitalism, I thought. If we hadn't found these, this would have been such a silly waste. All in the name of remaining competative.

The three of us smooshed ourselves into the front seats of the car and laughed maniaclly as we carted off our booty back to Tasha's house. We returned with the second carload of videos to Tasha's mom wandering around the garage wondering where the hell all these videos had come from. We told her the story, laughing the whole way through.

We spent the next day counting the videos and stacking them into a neat pile. After almost an hour and a half of stacking and sorting videos, we had the final count:

1,264 movies... and 43 playstation games.

And I knew exactly what we could do with them. I went to Kinko's to scam some copies of the flyer I made on Tasha's computer, and started passing them out around the college campus. We were having a movie yard sale. The flyer read "1,264 movies still in shrinkwrap! 1-2 dollars each!" The sale was set for next weekend.

I spent that next week hanging out on the porch of the Howland house per usual. I settled into the routine of spanging at Spartan's Spirits, getting some freeber action at El Azteca and spending the rest on 22 ouncers of icehouse. The weather was beautiful and there were always parties at the local frat houses we could crash. Life was good.

The weekend of the yard sale came up, and we made bank. I would come back to the Howland house to my friend Jed asking, "How are sales at the office?"

"Pretty good..." I would say, opening the paper bag in my arms and handing him a 40oz of icehouse. "Pretty good."

We made just over 700 dollars that weekend. Split between the three of us (Tasha, Starr, and myself) we each got about 230 bucks each. Not too bad considering we made no investment whatsoever. The next few days were a blurr of booze, parties, girls, and hanging out on the porch screaming Johnny Cash songs at the top of our lungs... at three in the morning.

The end of the week finally hit, and I looked in my wallet. It was empty. I had a terrible habit of buying everyone beers when I got drunk, and it finally caught up with me. I cursed myself for being so stupid. That money should have lasted me the next month or two, and now I was broke. Sitting on the porch that day Jed had one tidbit of wisdom. "Well, think of it this way. At least you had fun with it."

Jed joined me in my attempts over the next few days to trainhop out of town, but couldn't find a place where the trains rolled by slow enough. Our next attempt landed us on the outskirts of town trying to hitch a ride south. Jed insisted we walk along the freeway while sticking our thumbs out instead of waiting at the onramp, rewarding us with no ride and a seventeen dollar ticket courtesy of the Lansing city police.

Jed wandered off somewhere while I sat around East Lansing trying to figure out how the hell I was going to get out of here. I wanted to get to philly to see my friends Jakie and Liz again... but this town was constantly foiling my attempts! I finally walked to the greyhound station with the money I had spanged up out of sheer desperation. "How much is a ticket to philly?" I asked the attendant behind the glass.

"There's no buses going anywhere until further notice." She replied.

"What? Why the hell not?" I asked. She responded by slapping a news clipping from the internet up on the glass. The headline read, "Greyhound passenger slits driver's throat, 10 die in crash." and "all buses delayed until further notice." My head fell in defeat. Fuck.

Tasha was pulling a suitcase out of Starr's car as I walked through the back parking lot of the Howland house. Turning around she saw me and sighed, putting her hands on her hips and laughed. "You're back, AGAIN?"

Throwing my hands up in the air I replied, "This town won't let me leave!"

My final escape plan formulated the next day when I heard about a grindcore show at the Trumbleplex theater that weekend. Everyone at the Howland house was going and Tasha had enough room in her car to give Jed and I a ride there. It felt like it was my going away party. All the friends I had made in Lansing were there, and after the show I got more goodbye hugs than I could count. Jed, who was supposed to go with me to philly, forgot his pack in Lansing. I wasn't sure why, but I was certain he did it on purpose. I didn't really care though, I was kind of relieved actually. I didn't feel totaly right about traveling with him... It felt like the night was ending on a low note after everyone left. The people at the Trumbleplex were nice enough to let me crash on a couch in the showspace, but when the lights went off and I was on the verge of sleep I suddenly realized I was totally alone. It was a scary feeling.