The luck of the draw: I have been helping a friend whose home was foreclosed upon last month. The house didn't sell at auction on the courthouse steps, so the bank offered to pay him $2000 if he would empty the house "broom clean." This meant hiring a 30-yard dumpster, and he has no credit. Friends helped him get the extra deposit on rent (he has a job, he will pay it back) but I paid for the dumpster. He'll pay me back.

We had four days, and as we surveyed the mess (leftover from a late life-partner who had a hoarding gene) we wondered if we could fit it all in. And then along came the scrap metal people. Kind of an odd sort, but they always seemed to arrive just when we were thinking we couldn't do it. It literally kept us going! They'd tote off large metal objects (freezer, dead washer and dryer, pool furniture, metal scraps, etc.) and between the various folks who passed by, saw the dumpster, and asked if we had anything they could have, they probably toted off half-again the volume of the dumpster. One bad sort came by at what must have been 3am and helped themselves to yard power tools in the back yard, not so good and a police report was filed, but the rest of them were actually just trying to make ends meet and we had a mutual need.

My friend has moved into a modest apartment, he has a safe place and can close and lock the door and sleep comfortably. After paying a few people back he'll have some extra cash. The is the "it takes a village" non-random act, made possible by small random acts along the way. :)

SRS