Arnada woman’s table of free stuff a giving tradition in neighborhood

A trip to the free table at D Street and Fourth Plain Boulevard may yield an interesting find. On a recent Monday, there was a box of Toasty O’s, a can of tomatoes, an ice cube tray, some books, a pair of black flats and a toilet without a lid. A sign featuring a smiling sun reads “take some, leave some.”

If you’re lucky, Tricia LaRose, the curator of the free table, will be there. She may even recite a poem.

“When I was in the fourth grade, the teacher would teach us a poem or a joke or a song or something every day. I know a lot of them,” said LaRose, who’s 83. She’s memorized poems like Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” and “Paul Revere’s Ride” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

“This one’s mine. My stuff doesn’t rhyme, but it’s still pretty good,” LaRose said before reciting the poem: “The whole is accomplished in the smallest part. Each that we know is a thing, the essence of it is everywhere. Each thought, song, carving, toy, person, plant — this that I know is me — is only a manifestation of what I really am, part of a whole, not a separate part. Extending throughout the whole, I can go in through this manifestation of self. The farthest reaches are here with me. And now, life is like a feast laid out on a table to be surveyed with appreciation, to be taken and enjoyed, to be digested, to be mine, to be me.”

Alzheimer’s is starting to impair her incredible memory. LaRose has lost track of how long she’s lived in the Arnada neighborhood, and she doesn’t remember when she graduated from Clark College with straight A’s. She also cannot recall how long ago she set up the free table in front of her home. A couple of decades ago, maybe?

LaRose used to check on the table every couple of hours before she had a blood clot and a heart attack about a year ago.

While in the hospital she kept asking “is anyone checking the free table?” Her daughter, Tamara Farnsworth, left a note on the table, apologizing that it wasn’t being kept up and explaining that her mother was in the hospital. “You wouldn’t believe all the notes and nice things people left.”

LaRose still checks the table three or four times a day. How it works is simple.

“People put stuff on and people take stuff off. If there’s anything extra that I don’t need, I put it on. And, if I find something I want, I take it off,” LaRose said.

It all got started after her family held a yard sale. They were talking about how they wouldn’t mind people coming to get stuff, so long as they didn’t have to barter or stay with the stuff all day. Shortly thereafter, LaRose dragged a table out to the yard with a sign that read “free table” along with an assortment of things.

“People have taken the table like five or six times,” Farnsworth said.

Since then, somebody built a stand that’s attached to a telephone pole and helps keep things somewhat protected from the rain. These days, it’s weather-worn but still stocked with odds and ends. Neighbors and church groups bring things. Stuff comes and goes year-round, particularly around Christmas time.

“Everything from toys, furniture, tools, lamps, parts — all kinds of things. Things you just wouldn’t believe appear on that table morning, noon and night,” Farnsworth said. Though there is the occasional single shoe or some other junk that has to be hauled away.

“Mostly it isn’t junk,” LaRose said.

People will drop off boxes of items, and LaRose will organize them. She’ll take clothes to Open House Ministries to give to clients in the transitional shelter, and she’ll bring back a loaf of bread or toiletries to leave on the table for those in need.

LaRose personally understands the idea behind “take some, leave some,” the only instructions for the table. Years ago, she let someone live in her garage, and that person in turn helped convert her garage into a cottage, where LaRose now lives. She rents out rooms in the main house on the property.