“Try before you buy” was obviously his motto, even though the price was zero. The article on offer curbside was a heavy steel ooky-pinky-brown heavy steel typing table. It had four wheels, with brakes, and two drop-down side leaves. We rescued it in the same way many years ago, and it served in turn as the typing table it was intended to be, a sewing table, a computer table, an end table, and so on and so on. This guy really deliberated and, while he did, he checked on the brakes, he wheeled it forward and backward in every direction, and he dropped the side leaves and put them back up again more than once apiece. Then he finally loaded it into his van. I checked, and found the same table in steel gray on a Craig’s List somewhere, offered for $35. Whether there will be a taker for that table at that price remained to be seen, but our discard is on its way to a new life. I think that if the intention had been to turn it into scrap there would have been no trial run and no long deliberation.