He sold his house on Tonset Road two years ago and lives in New Hampshire now, but John Bailey -- who worked at The Gift House from 1980 - 1990 -- made a visit to town today. At 98, he's as cheerful as ever and loaded with stories about the things he found at the dump over the years. Pieces of boats, engines, a sterling silver box, antiques, and "at least 100 bikes," which he restored and used to sell on the grass in front of his house.
When the time came to move away, to the Scott-Farrar Home in Peterborough, boxes and boxes of stuff that he and his wife Norma, who died eight years ago, had accumulated over the years came back to the Gift House -- and didn't last long. Dispersal was almost immediate. Talk about recycling! But John did take a few treasures with him to remind him of the good old days at the dump, including the sign that now hangs on his door.
Only one week left to see this AMAZING show -- an exhibition of assemblages of colored plastic gathered from at the dump shacks of Cape Cod. Rindler, who lives in Wellfleet, and a former president of the Milwaukee Institute of Art and former dean of the Cooper Union, has amassed thousands of toy figures, salad spinners, hamster wheels and Easter eggs . . . along with anything else that's plastic . . . and created an achingly beautiful and hilarious exhibition that is at the Provincetown Art Association Museum on Commercial Street until May 29. You'll laugh. You'll cry. But don't wait! 
