Memories Get Trashed

Maybe it was the Coca-Cola Classic Young Movie Maker series that played some time back at theaters during the preview "advertainment" segment.
While most everyone else is waiting in line for the popcorn, drink, candy, hot dog and/or pretzel that will triple their out-of-pocket entertainment experience, I can usually be found actually watching not only the "advertainments", but even those boring movie history questions inserted between local, homegrown business advertisement movie billboards - slides, actually.
But I'm pretty sure it was the current Young Movie Maker reel that captured my awareness. That, and the fact that I am a full time professional commercial, wedding and event video producer.
In the Young Movie Maker reel the scenario is that an older woman is cleaning out her closet? basement? and comes across an old reel of movie film. She tosses it, probably because she doesn't have anything to project it.
Or, she hasn't thought (doesn't know) about people like me who provide (sometimes for a reasonable price) services transferring film, old videotape formats and images-photos-mementos-graphics and other stuff to the current storage medium. The current medium is DVD, although some are still transferring home movies and stuff to videotape.
Anyway, for whatever reason she tosses the old reel of film. Then we see a dumpster diver digging it out, other characters come into play and in a series of disconnected events the film winds up spilled and spooling around a bicycle wheel sprocket with the sun shining "just so" through a Coca-Cola bottle in the street and onto the side of a perfectly parked, perfectly flat, perfectly reflective, white delivery truck.
The older woman is looking out her window to see such commotion, and everyone freezes into an awed Kodak Moment while the nostalgic scenes play out on the side of that truck.
For someone who makes a living helping others preserve such memories, that was one of the most wonderful cinematic experiences I've ever enjoyed. It blew me away.
Maybe it was that recollection that caused me to notice some old reels and videotapes in a trash can as I was walking a neighborhood. I am not by nature a dumpster diver. I rarely, if ever, shop yard/garage sales...
...Wal*Mart is about as cheap as I'll go.
But there were those moments from the past, probably some person's memories carelessly discarded. Maybe not. But, there they were. I'm seeing that emotionally charged Young Movie Maker segment. So I took them. I am going to play and review what I can. If they are commercial rejects then I'll toss them again.
But! If they are not! If they are someone's memories...
...I'll likely see if I can find an address. A name. I'll put what looks right onto a DVD and mail or hand deliver a sample of it. If they don't want to pay for it, depending on how I read the circumstances, judge their reaction, I might just give it to them anyway.
If THAT happens, I'm going to want an interview on video, or an article for a magazine.