Tuesday, April 08, 2008

My Magneto

You remember our flood(s) of January? We got rid of mountains of trash from that adventure, emptying our basement and filling the curbside more than once. But also in the basement there were lots of things made of metal that didn't end up on the curb. Our thought was to take all the metal scrap to recycling and get a bit of money for ourselves, instead of giving it to the scavengers of the night. It ended up being a fairly large pile. There was a candy rack, pipes, poles, a weird box that was here when we moved in, grates, odd pieces and a kitchen sink (really!). All of that got piled into the side yard where it's been sitting ever since, most of the time under a ton of ice and snow.


With the snow melted now, the metal junk pile was really starting to get to me, especially since it was sitting right outside the window where I stand to wash the dishes. I was reminded daily of its existence.

"You've got to get that stuff out of the yard. It's making me crazy." I pleaded with the Man.

"No problem. You just find out where to take it and it's gone."

Where to take it, I found out, is literally a one minute drive from our house. Honestly, I had no idea that this place was there and I drive by it all the time. Shows what a focused driver I am, I guess.

On Monday, when I came home from zombie sitting, the Man was all smiles.

"Did you see the yard?" I looked and the giant pile of junk was gone.

"Not only that, but guess how much I got for it." His smile got even bigger.

After a long description of the dropping off process, the price of aluminum, a van that he watched get crushed and in general how very cool the metal recycling place was, I found out that all our scrap was worth $63. Wow! I had only worked a half a day, so he had actually made more money than I had.

"So that's it!" The Man declared, "I'm going into the scrap metal collection business."

"You're going to be a garbage picker?"

"No! Scrap metal collection and recycling."

"Garbage picking."

"No! Metal collector. It's an important job. Those resources shouldn't end up in landfills. Now, could you find out the trash collection schedule for the whole city for me?"

3 comments:

chipper said...

He can come by to peruse our trash on Monday mornings but he'd better bring the rest of you so we can hang out while he picks through for any paper clips or staples :)

Anonymous said...

I have three enormous metal cabinets in our basement that can be "collected." If you can get them out, you are welcome to them!

Nance said...

Oh my. He's a Landfill Resource Redirecter.

(garbage picker)