KELOWNA – This afternoon while driving down Highway 97 with his family, local man Edward Dunn brought his car to a screeching halt after noticing the top-grade gravel that somebody had left on the side of the road.
“Ho boy, that’s some good looking gravel,” said Dunn, marveling over what was clearly part of the shoulder. “You could do some landscaping with this, maybe put a gravel inlay in your second washroom. The possibilities are endless.”
“Sandra, pop the trunk.”
Having assessed the quality of the gravel, Dunn called his wife and two children out of their vehicle to collect it with the several pails and shovels Dunn always keeps in his trunk in case of a “good haul.”
“It’s amazing what people will leave lying around,” said Dunn, whose children just really wanted to get to hockey practice. “That’s 40 kilos of gravel that I don’t have to buy now. I wish I had more room in the trunk, but you don’t just ignore decent grit when you find it.”
Dunn’s family reports that this is a frequent occurrence, with Edward collecting the raw material for dozens of home improvement projects at a rate impossible for him to keep up with. Renovations planned include a third extension to the backyard veranda and installing a chandelier made from the broken glass people had “abandoned” in Kelowna’s many garbage cans.
“The guest bedroom has been full of used lumber for two years, and I won’t even get into where he keeps the wire spools” said Dunn’s wife Sandra, barely holding back tears. “I can’t live like this anymore.”
Dunn is confident that he will get around to all of his projects eventually and that his family will be better off for it, just as soon as he finished collecting all the shingles some sap had left on his roof.
