These TVs will never make anybody happy again.

The first day that Ellie B and I passed the grass in front to the apartment house in our Syracuse city neighborhood, I had to pull our dear Dogamous Pyle and her ever-curious nose away from the stack of belongings.

There were a couple of mattresses. Garbage bags packed with assorted clothing. And three TVs. Literally and figuratively, somebody’s life was put out to the curb. The optimist in me wanted to think that perhaps an occupant of one of the apartments had saved up some cash somehow, enough to buy rooms full of the stuff needed for daily living.

But the realist in me had to reconcile with the probability that somebody couldn’t come up with the rent enough months in a row to be targeted for eviction.

The next day, there was far less for Ellie B to try to stick her nose in. Gone were the mattresses and bags brimming with stuff. All that remained were the three TV sets. They were all overturned. The neighborhood wire-gatherer had taken his or her hammer to each, smashing the plastic casing and ripping out anything that could be resold by the pound.

The garbage collectors had come and gone. The husks of three TVs remained. I imagined that they once proudly sat in a living room, parents bedroom and kids bedroom. I pictured how they once had kept a bunch of people company. There they sat, stripped of all utility and previous dignity.

I have not come here today to go all Grumpus on you. That grumbling will come if the discarded TV sets still sit there after the snow has come and gone. There is precedent, unfortunately.

No. Today I am sad.

I feel badly for the group of people who no longer sleep on those mattresses or wear those clothes or watch those TVs. Life must not be real great for them right now.

And I feel some pain for those who travel the neighborhood in search of discarded TVs to bust and loot of wiring. That doesn’t sound like much fun, either.