Half Mile of Highway, Greenville, South Carolina

6:45 AM, Sunday, walking along the road. The most astounding things are lying off in the grass and bushes, nestled in amongst all the plastic bags, cigarette butts, water and beer bottles, soda cans, straws and other assorted garbage.  Do some people believe items mysteriously cease to exist once they shove it out from their car windows into space, or are they really just narcissistic noxious imbeciles?  

Lovely, right? *

 1.       A pair of very large pliers, looked like fishing pliers. Fell out or were thrown out?

Looked like these.*

 

2.       Pieces of a large antique wood and plaster picture frame, gilded and ornate, also broken into pieces. 

 3.  A once beautiful antique chair made of what looked like teak or mahogany. Heavy wood elegantly shaped with beautiful scroll work on the chair back, broken into pieces.

 

It looked a lot like this, no seat cover though.*

4.       A large moving strap, blue, the kind used for furniture and large items. Never treat your movers badly. The chair, the frame and the moving strap probably came from the same place.

5.       One floral seat cushion from a lawn chair that looked new. Probably blew off when someone brought their new furniture home from the store. Finding it gone when it was time to unload was undoubtedly very annoying. 

6.       What looked like an entire CD collection, without cases, spread out along the entire half mile (possibly more but I only walked a half mile of them), in groups of two or three.  Someone scorned found the CD wallet of an ex still in his/her car. I wonder if driving along the highway periodically flinging groups of CD’s out the window made him/her feel better? I admit to being curious as to the musical taste they represented but they looked as if they’d been there a while and I wasn’t about to touch them to find out. 

7.       A 6 foot dog leash, completely intact, green. Maybe a frustrated doggie slyly grabbed the leash when sticking its head out the window as usual and “accidentally” let go.

It was this type of hubcap!*

8.       A brand new BMW hubcap. Self explanatory but I someone is not going to be happy at having to replace that!  I’m only surprised it’s still there but it probably won’t be for long. 

9.       What appeared to be a new floor mat from a Toyota Highlander. I’m having a hard time coming up with a plausible scenario where one reaches down, pulls up the floor mat (passenger side) from a relatively new vehicle and flings it out the window.  Maybe there was a spider on it? 

10.       A cobalt blue wine bottle. Self explanatory and should have been recycled, but it was such a pretty color!

 

11.   Several pieces of broken blue willow china. An angry teenager took her mom’s heirloom china and threw it out the window of a car in a fit of teenage spite. Mom is heartbroken because it belonged to her grandmother; teenager won’t feel bad about it for another ten years.

12.   A somewhat worse for wear Christmas card, but the colors are still bright. 

The phone I saw looked like this, but was far more broken! *

13.   Shattered iphone 4S, white. “Who was that, who was it?!” In my version a not natural blonde is screaming at her boyfriend in the front of a truck. “That was her, wasn’t it! You’re talking to her again! Give me that!” She grabs the phone away from her boyfriend. “I knew it!” Furiously, she throws the phone out the window. 

14.   A pair of men’s underwear, briefs, not boxers. I really, really do NOT want to know!

  15.   An entire box of donuts from Publix. These had to have been dumped shortly before I walked by as I can’t imagine the wildlife would leave them alone for long and the box was pristine, the donuts untouched. Or perhaps the critters are just smarter about what they eat?  I imagined a person who has been desperately trying to stick to a diet and bought the donuts at a weak moment. Driving home with the box sitting accusingly on the passenger seat, she/he threw the box out the window in a moment of resolve before they weakened again. While I applaud the intention and the willpower, I wish they had used a trash can. 

The box looked just like this, different donuts though. *

16.   An intact mouse pad; yellow, with black writing on it. Again, wasn’t going to touch it and having a hard time coming up with why it’s on the side of the road? Perhaps it goes with the. . . . 

17.   Computer motherboard. Someone knows you’re supposed to wipe your information off the hard drive but couldn’t figure out how or be bothered to have someone do it for them, maybe? In order to protect their information, they attempted to wrap the entire motherboard in the mouse pad and threw it out the window of the car, thinking it would then cease to exist. 

18.   A Christmas door mat. Maybe it goes with the Christmas card? 

19.   A love note, written on wide ruled notepaper, folded into quarters and with the name, “Brian” written on it in big, curly letters with hearts and curlicues around the name. Some twelve year old girl has a ten year old brother who found it in her backpack or pocket on the way to somewhere. In order to behave the way ten year old younger brothers normally do, he of course, immediately told her Dad she had a boyfriend, taunted her about Brian and threw it out the window. A screaming fight followed ended with Dad yelling, “y’all stop that right now or I’m going to turn this GD*MN car around and you can sit in your room for a week!”

The one I saw was folded again, said, "Brian" and had more hearts & curlicues.*

Walking around is a great way to explore and get to know new areas, meet interesting people and see weird stuff!

*I did not take any of the photos here, they are all courtesy of Google image searches - if I'd taken my phone I could have taken my own, but, oh well.