Dumpster Diving

Many years ago in Detroit, Michigan, my dear mother spurned on by an unconventional friend, picked through the garbage dumpster behind local grocery stores on the days when the stores removed past date food. While some of you might find this distasteful, I personally found it exciting in a publicly humiliating yet culturallly liberating kind of way--the way many street people feel. "Ha ha! You think that I am the ignorant one, but I don't have to put on a suit every day and be a slave to The Man and get to eat free and live on my own terms. Buwahaaahaha!"

Besides the outside-the-mainstream fun of dumpster diving, good food sometimes managed to make it to our table this way. My always trendy mom (that was the very early 70s) was a health-food nazi and was put in a double bind by free, yet unhealthy food. My first taste of CoCo Krispies, poured from a bent, but perfectly intact box, was from dumpster diving and I never looked at breakfast the same way again. Go happily back to nasty granola? Nevuh!

Seems my mom and her crazy buddies were ahead of the curve. Now called "Freegans", marauding people go from resteraunt trash bag to dumpster scavenging for edible, free food. As long as it passes the smell test everything is a-okay. More power to 'em.