Harvesting Freeway Bounty

My husband was so excited when he came home from work this evening. “Guess what.” He asks me.


I don’t have a clue.

“You’ll never guess what I found.” He says.

He’s wrong, I have an idea. My husband is a freeway scrounger. He’s always on the lookout for interesting items on the side of the road. One of his schemes is to sell hubcaps on e-Bay. He thinks he could make a fortune!

“If you found a cooler,” I tell him “it doesn’t count unless you also have the lid.”

“I have the lid!” he exclaims and describes in detail how he first saw the blue cooler on the side of the freeway but hadn’t made the decision to pull over and pick it up until, and here he practically chortles with excitement, “there was the lid on the other side of the freeway!” So he slammed on the brakes and backed up to get the cooler and then crosses to the other side of the freeway to recover its lid.

He insisted I come outside to admire the big blue cooler in the back of his pickup.

“There’s no lid” I say.

“Oh wait” he says as he opens the pickup door and pulls out a white cooler top. “I have proof that this is a freeway find.” And he points to skid marks on the lid where it bounced on the pavement.

“And look at this” he declares as he pulls yet another hubcap from the back of the pickup.

I can drive for miles and miles and never see anything interesting, except road kill and those bottles of pee that truckers toss along the side of the road. This is Paul’s second cooler this month. He also found a small red cooler, with lid, that he’s now using to keep his snacks cold when he goes fishing.

I count my blessings. I have a husband with eagle eyes and plenty of coolers. If I ever lose a hubcap, there’s a good chance he’ll have one to spare.

Life is good.