The Secret of Trash

My life is, in a sense, trash.

— John Updike

When I was 17, hoping to find treasure, I picked Bob Dylan's trash.

The songster lived that year in the uppermost story of 94 MacDougal Street, a Greenwich Village townhouse he owned.

The plastic bag I nicked from Dylan's curbside—a perfectly legal, if unseemly, act—contained nothing but soiled Pampers, dirty paper towels, and kitchen-table scraps. Not a single abandoned lyric, guitar pick, or harmonica holder. I quickly tossed the foul-smelling bag into a public trash receptacle nearby.

This month Sotheby's will auction a 15th-century Ming dynasty bowl valued at $500,000. The owner, an anonymous picker, bought the bowl—one of only seven known to exist—at a Connecticut yard sale for $35. The picker had the "good eye"—and good luck—my 17-year-old, treasure-hunting self lacked.

All trash may be trash, but some trash is also treasure. The secret is to pick the right trash.

A man named Paul Moran once picked John Updike's trash after seeing the late writer deposit two plastic bags in the garbage bin in front of his Massachusetts home.

Moran found a batch of honorary college degrees Updike had received—all in pristine condition—and decided then and there to make a routine of picking Updike's trash every Wednesday.

Moran's routine soon led to him to amassing an enormous collection of Updike memorabilia that included discarded drafts, old love letters, Christmas cards, vacation photos, utility bills, receipts, canceled checks, White House invitations, floppy disks, address books, eyeglasses, and worn-out clothing.

When the author discovered Moran was picking his trash, he took steps to thwart him, but they didn't work. Moran returned every Wednesday until Updike died in 2009.

“I was sort of tormented by my activity,” Moran told The Atlantic in 2014. “It was a compulsion, an obsession. But I thought it was a justifiable one. I would have done the same thing if Picasso was living down the road."

Moran's treasures today reside in a rented storage unit in Austin. 

Mine lie buried in a landfill in Canarsie.