:: in.a.mirror.dimly ::

Somewhere in Vermont or Eastern NY state there is someone with a huge decorative fireplace that used to be in our house. The previous owners of our home left it sitting in the living room; a full-size fireplace made for decoration only and sporting a nifty light bulb somewhere inside to give off some semblance of a glow.

It’s a truly ugly invention that I cannot imagine purchasing. Though the wood on the sides is in good enough shape, the rest looks fake, and the time it spent outside our house these past 3 months did not leave it looking all that flattering on the top.

I’d been trying to work up the gumption to take it to the dump, when the wise words of my father-in-law came to mind. “If you ever want to get rid of something, stick a ‘free’ sign on it and leave it by the curb. People can’t resist the ‘free’ sign.”

So I stuck a free sign on the fireplace after Julie and I hauled it to the road side. We live on a relatively quiet dirt road since it runs parallel to the main road, but we strategically waited until the weekend of Arlington’s town-wide garage sale.

All Saturday no one took the bait, though several cars slowed down to give it a look. On Sunday morning we left for an overnight trip at the family camp up at Lake George, returning on Monday evening.

We pulled in as usual and then Julie asked me, “Do you think the fireplace  was moved to somewhere else on our property or did someone actually take it?” Sure as shootin’, the fireplace was gone. I felt triumphant. The sign worked! Not only did we keep that hideous thing out of the land fill, we saved the cost of dumping it.