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Junk Haulers to the Rescue
FI-Security Date: 7/01/05 Photographer: Susan Biddle/TWP Neg#169907 Location: Rockville, MD Summary: Karen Martin is using 1-800-GOT-JUNK, a service that picks up anything in your house and takes it to the dump, to clean out her parents house and get it ready for market. At left is Frank O'Brien and at right is Jonathan Charlton who are carrying out an old refrigerator to load on truck. StaffPhoto imported to Merlin on Wed Jul 6 16:47:09 2005
(Susan Biddle/twp - Twp)
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"Have you ever seen such a glorified mess?" she said, to which Charlton replied, "We love glorified messes."
O'Brien and Charlton hauled out at least a dozen garbage bags full of newspapers. Some of the papers fell out of the bags. They were from as far back as 1974. The young men hauled out old "artwork," lamps, pillows, and a lot of what could only be described as trash.
"We've seen a lot worse," O'Brien said, hopping back in the truck.
They stopped for hamburgers at Checkers and then made their way, without any U-turns, to another home in Rockville, where David Strauss was working on emptying his unfinished basement so that his wife could finish it. She had heard finishing it would increase the value of their home should they decide to sell. There were two obstacles: two old refrigerators and a pool table that had become an excellent place to fold clothes. O'Brien decided that it would be easier to haul the pool table out if he first broke it into several dozen pieces with a sledgehammer.
"Smaller pieces are lighter than one big piece," he said. Strauss had to admit that the junk guy made an excellent point. But the balls were still on the table. So O'Brien rolled them across the table to Strauss, who decided he would save them, for reasons he couldn't exactly articulate.
"My wife didn't really want me to get rid of the table altogether," Strauss said. "But I'm over it. Nobody is using it."
And then came the hammer. In 10 minutes, the pool table was reduced to dozens of pieces. O'Brien took a hammer to the refrigerators, too. He was hammer happy. They made a dozen trips back and forth to the truck with the remains. O'Brien and Charlton left Strauss in his basement. It was nearly empty, full of opportunity.
It cost him $421.
