How to Curb Consumption

Lessons from the gutter.

Yesterday I came across a head of lettuce in the street, the gutter to be precise. Iceberg. What are you doing here?, I thought looking around. The restaurant. It must have received a delivery, their back door only a few feet away. The food delivery truck must’ve pulled up, unloaded, and driven off without noticing the wayward head. There it lay.

I felt bad for it, approached it, bent down, read its label. California. It had come all the way from the opposite coast, kitty corner from where we now stood. Thoughts of Salinas and John Steinbeck and East of Eden filled my head, the Trask family’s ruinous transcontinental lettuce shipping enterprise. This lettuce had travelled 3,700 refrigerated miles only to falter a few feet from its final destination, a hamburger. It was a tragedy in the making. Someone needed to step in. If not, it would breathe its last cellophane clad breath in the gutter of a foreign country, my country. I couldn’t let that happen. I took it home, ran it under the tap, removed its outermost leaf and ate it as fresh wraps for sandwich fillings for the rest of the week.

What we deem edible is at least in part in our head, a product of conditioning. Things on shelves, under lights, in stores? Edible. Things in the gutter? Inedible. But as the lettuce proved it’s sometimes not as black and white as that. We have some say in the matter. We can exercise our judgement. We have the ability to bring our powers of discriminating awareness to bear.

My dog and I recently found a loaf of artisanal bread from an expensive bakery around the corner. Sourdough. It was in a bush, in a brown bag, tossed there, I guessed, by someone who’d asked for money and received food instead. That’s an $8 loaf, I said to the dog, Free range, spray- and nitrate-free, grass-fed, extra virgin, sustainably sourced and harvested, The best in current food virtues, It has more going for it than the two of us put together. Just give me the bread, his look said. Someone had to eat it, he was right, and since I’m not doing carbs he got it all. But I made him save some for later. We do the same with pizza. We’re surrounded by pizzerias. When he finds a box of leftovers he gets a few bites on the spot and I turn the rest into garnishes for his dog food.

I don’t stop at food. My first experience with nonconsumables was a pair of burgundy leather gloves I found in a Boston gutter one February. I was about to cross the street at a busy intersection when I spotted them there at my feet. It was a red light. I pictured a car having pulled up, someone jumping out, the gloves falling from their lap. They’ll get ruined, I thought, I have to rescue them.

That’s another thing, this one harder to pin down. I probably wasn’t the first person to see them. Others had probably passed by. When it comes to something lying in the street it’s as if there’s an unwritten rule that says it’s wrong to pick it up. Someone may be watching. They may judge you. Total strangers will think less of you. You have an image to protect and project. But the only one with the image problem, really, is the thing on the ground. We’ve turned it into trash in our minds.

A few winters ago I watched over a period of weeks as a pair of jeans, flat and frozen, migrated from the centre of a busy street to the side, nudged there by cars and rain and snow and plow, driven over, salted and parked on. Even down and out there was something about them. Finally, I took a closer look and then picked them up by one now thawed and soggy leg and dragged them home. I had a feeling about them. I washed them and then examined them more closely. I was right. They were well made. So I dried them and folded them and wrapped them up and gave them to my son for Christmas. Why is there sand in the pockets?, he asked. Dunno, I said, Maybe they’re like stonewashed only sandwashed, Special. Now that they were on him they looked like they’d never been anywhere else.

I don’t pick up everything I see. I need to be into it. I need to be in the right mood. I’ve become choosy. But aside from whatever alterations the elements—earth, water, and air—introduce, an item can be perfectly good and, sometimes, like with the jeans, even better. Improved. Food and clothing aren’t necessarily unusable just because of their immediate circumstances. Does the item seem to be in need of rescue? Does it seem like its useful life was cut short? Interrupted? Is it where it is through no fault of its own? Might it still lead a productive life? If nothing else, could it be rescued and donated? It requires a little on-the-spot reconnoitering. But not to worry. If you don’t pick up it up straight away odds are good it will still be there if you change your mind. And if you need more convincing just remember the lettuce. It was as edible out of the truck as in it. Same lettuce. Same with those jeans. Wearable. My son seemed to agree when I finally told him where they came from.