I’m just a simple desk in a university town where countless stories are waiting to be told.

Recently I arrived at my 72nd home at the northeast corner of Granger Avenue and Packard Street — saved from certain doom after being left on a raucous Dewey Street near Mr. Pizza and Wise Guys Deli. The two young ladies who rescued me seem very kind and lighthearted. Both are college seniors, so I’ll probably be treated well and gently placed in front of their house in early May.

Let me describe a fascinating Ann Arbor tradition — a polite practice extending back to the early 20th century. During warmer months of the year, unwanted, usable household items are often placed on grass strips separating roads from sidewalks.

Everyone seems to know it’s all free.

Various things are deposited: couches, desks, tools, textbooks, old term papers graded B or lower, children’ s toys, baby strollers, clothing, used bathroom sinks, even surplus lumber and plumbing supplies.

In areas close to campus the entire contents of some apartments are hauled out front by irritated landlords. I’ve ended up crushed beneath countless piles over the decades. Some students — apparently very wealthy — leave town after the academic year with few personal items.

Amazingly everything else is abandoned for students and residents of lesser means. Share and share alike — I guess.

My life began in the garage of a Michigan professor who specialized in folklore studies. The year was 1901, before the era of Big House football. To break the monotony of English department routines, he dabbled in woodwork while making toys, building cutting boards, rolling pins and picture frames for his wife and friends, as well as creating gifts for colleagues who thought him a bit eccentric.

He took pride in this scrutiny as eccentricity was considered a virtue in early 1900s university culture. Besides, working with wood reminded him of his father — a talented artist and carpenter from Florence, Oregon who emigrated from Bohemia after being wounded in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866.

The professor crafted me for his daughter who excelled in school and had keen interests in Bohemian medieval literature and ancient traditions of Eastern Orthodox monastic orders. Very stern stuff indeed. After their only child left in late summer of 1911 for undergraduate work in the humanities at the University of Oregon, the professor and his wife carefully carried me to the front of their Tappan Avenue home — hoping for the best.

And so began a venerable Ann Arbor custom, as well as my journey from neighborhood to neighborhood and home to home.

Down through the 20th century I lived with annoying mathematical geniuses, paint splattering artists, budding political activists, technology wizards, even a Michigan football legend.

In 1962 Tom Hayden, former editor of the Michigan Daily and co-founder of Students for a Democratic Society, penned drafts of the now famous Port Huron Statement on my scarred top. Power to the people!

During the 1990-91 school year Desmond Howard, Michigan’s recent Heisman Trophy winner, brought me to his apartment on Hill Street near Blimpy Burger. Every now and then he cherished the Blimpy Quint with tomatoes, green olives and onions — no cheese please.

Larry Page, co-founder of Google, sketched early plans for an imagined hi-tech business during a very cold 1995 winter semester. I suspected something big as he pondered new-fangled Internet linkages.

I witnessed a multitude of behaviors that sociologists and anthropologists would appreciate as they chronicle change in hitherto unstudied private lives of university students of the last 100 years. Undoubtedly my creator — long since gone from this earth — would value these intriguing tales of academe.

I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be making rounds in Ann Arbor, as I’ve always lived with uncertainty. Fortunately no one ever suggested taking me to a landfill or Columbus, Ohio — yet. Will a woodworker spot me this coming spring, load me in a truck and make needed repairs for the 21st century?

Dwight Lang is a regular contributor to Ann Arbor.com and Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.