I was the same way for years, thought a dry mix was just how real masons did it and anything wet was for guys who couldn't keep a line straight. Then a guy on my crew talked me into adding more lime and I fought him on it the whole time. Funny how you can call something skill when it's really just the way you were taught. Once I made the switch my corners lined up so much easier and I stopped fighting the trowel all day. Took me a while to admit my old mix was holding me back, not helping me.

That lamp with no shade really gets me because it shows the whole system works on timing more than anything. Half of what lands there is junk, sure, but the other half is stuff someone almost threw away and then someone else needed that same week. The weird part nobody talks about is that a free table is basically a tiny test of how fast a neighborhood moves things around. If a thing sits there two days it's trash, if it disappears in an hour it was treasure, and that line is always shifting. Around my way I've seen a single snow boot, a bag of fake flowers, and once a full set of encyclopedias that was gone by morning. My guess is the stuff people call trash on those tables says less about us than the fact that we have no other place to put it.