We live in Suburbia, on a corner with one street that doesn’t go through and stops at a driveway and at the entrance to a Cul De Sac going the other way.
Normally it’s fairly quiet although for some reason there is more traffic than one would think.
At least I do.
Garbage pick up is every Monday and every other week everyone puts out a rolling recycling bin with cardboard, plastic bottles and pop cans. There are smaller, stackable bins for glass bottles, newspapers and something else we never use that I can’t remember off the top of my head.
Since I haven’t even seen a newspaper in years we obviously don’t use that one either.
Also since I have worked a Swing Shift off and on for the past eight or ten years, there are times that I will be sitting out on the front porch having a smoke at One or Two O:Clock in the morning.
Over those same years, I have occasionally seen people going through the recycling bins pulling out the recycleable plastic bottle and pop cans in the middle of the night.
Sometimes on foot but mostly someone with a little pick up or car they throw them in the back of.
I doesn;t bother me a bit as long as they are respectful enough not to leave a mess, which I have never seen anyone do.
People do what they gotta do and we are obviously not going to do anything with them.
The last two Pick Up days have been different.
The last time two weeks ago and just now this morning a few minutes ago, there have been guys out there in broad daylight going through them.
Something has changed and it is indicative to me that people are getting squeezed harder than ever trying to survive.
Just my observation that I thought I would share.
Anyone else seeing local patterns changing?
Wife and I were batwatching last Sunday evening about 8:30 pm and couple of women walked along the road doing just that…collecting aluminum cans from the recycling bins at each house.
None last evening.
The last house I lived at people did that. But they weren’t clean about it, left a mess everywhere. So I started yelling at them, and that slowed it down for a while. One day, in the bright light of day, some jerkwad decided to walk up on the yard of my neighbors house, and start going thru the bins located on the side of the house. Yelled at him. He was confounded I would do that, he did not understand why I was upset. I have been at this house now for 17 years and have not seen that.
cans and bottles may be OK, make a lot of noise when they throw ’em in the back of the pickup, but
just wait ’til they take an insulated pair of long-handled cutters and separate you from your electric supply – for the copper
When I lived in Mass. we had a deposit law ,nickel a can.
A old woman on trash day would walk around with shopping basket collecting empties,I put them out on their own for her.
One time trash guys started with her saying the deposit bottles were theirs,I put a quick end to that nonsense!
I feel she needed the monies or was just bored,either way,was glad to help her out.
I haven’t so much seen people scavenging recyclables with scrap/deposit value in my Stepford style suburb, but the local scrap place I take loads of copper, brass, lead and steel to periodically as been busier than a $3 whore on a troop ship the last month or so. Well more so than even their usual brisk pace of business.
I personally picked off an old rusty LP tank the other night from a curbside pile, as I can exchange it for a fresh, full one at the local hardware or grocery store, and don’t have to pay full tilt (for the tank and the fill) which saves me a nice chunk of money. I like having extra tanks around, as I can not only use them with my grill, but have built a manifold that I can connect as many as six tanks together as a secondary fuel source for my backup generator.
years ago there was an old couple who would pick up cans on the side of the hwy and trash cans and piles.
people would laugh and talk bad about them, but he paid for a brand new truck with what he made.
God feeds the birds, but he does not drop the worm in their mouth. they have to go get em.
I remember that same thing way back in the early 80’s.
An older couple going around the state parks at the beaches South of Coos Bay
.
One day they showed up in a brand new Ford F-150..
I remember being so happy for them.
Out here in the middle of bumfuck nowhere we’ve had a homeless camp spring up next to a couple of wheat fields. Tents, scrap metal and plywood hooches, couple of old buses/rv’s and assorted broken down rigs. No water, no power, no sewer, no nothing. Miles from the nearest store. They are causing problems in the area and the local popo has been involved.
Up close and personal ran off a guy poking around the back of our place a while back and then a couple days later walking in from working in the berry patch noticed something glint in the sunlight under the wife’s car. Someone had propped up brand new screws against the tread behind each of her tires, just lucky I noticed them. In addition to checking fluids every morning we’ve now implemented a walk around before backing out. That kind of shit will get me pissed in a hurry, especially when both of my daughters have a 70 to 90 mile drive, through mostly empty country, when they leave here headed to their apartments and/or work.
On another note that thing you and I spoke of is finally winging its way towards you. Should get there in the next few days.
Later
wes
wtdb
Now that the weather in MI is mostly above freezing (so long as you are not out between 1 and 6 AM) we are seeing the return of the beggar class. Last week I stopped by a local coffee shop to get something for the wife unit (I rarely pay for the stuff as we make our own at home), and lo there was a mid 20 something guy, tall, slim and in apparent perfect health, longish hair but not disheveled and was dressed for the temps (it was 37 degrees), sitting inside the coffee shop with his beggar sign resting on the table. By the time I got my drink served, he had moved outside and was standing there with his sign held up.
Mind I know some folks go through tough times, but this healthy specimen in presentable state and not muttering or shuffling, could have been earning 15 bucks an hour working in that same coffee shop that has signs begging for workers on the door. It does not take a genius to learn how to use a highly automated coffee machine or follow a menu for the fancy crap that seems to be the norm..
As near as I can figure, his normal place is by a heavily traveled street across from our courthouse but with the cold, the local shop let him hang out for a while to warm up, but then out he had to go.
I only mention this as an example as what had been noticeable is the huge increase of people begging at the side of busy roads, usually near the shopping areas and the strips with lots of eateries along the road. Very few older grizzled types in wheelchairs, we have 2 of those and they are the only ones I chat with and sometimes hand over a couple of bucks.
All the rest are relatively young and in apparent healthy condition. I simply cannot reconcile this with the fact I was working at 16 as a floor sweep/stock boy at a local supermarket near my house and that I have worked constantly, even while in U pursuing a degree, to make ends meet. If you are healthy and not soft of mind, you can work. Just don’t get me started on what my tax money has been going to the last 20 years. Charity comes from the individual or organizations populated by individuals of like mind, NOT the federal, state or local government.
Daughter puts her pop cans in a separate grocery bag and hangs them off the side of the dumpster for whomever is collecting cans in our area.
Usually, it’s older Hispanic guys collecting cans here in the Phoenix Metro Area. Haven’t seen too many homeless collecting cans. The homeless are the ones panhandling.
The church my parents went to had some kinda charity they thought was worthwhile. I don’t recall what, but it sounded good. Before his slow slide started, Dad turned picking up aluminum cans into his retirement hobby and when he had enough to make it worth the effort, he and their pastor would spend a few hours crushing them and hauling them to the recycler with the cash going to the charity. It gave him something to do besides sit in the house and irritate Mother and did some kinda good while he was at it, or anyway he thought so.
I wonder if any of the can and bottle collectors were TSA agents?
Bwahahahahahahahahaha
Umm, guys the part about cans and bottle collection in states that do not pay cash for same is a scam being run by professional groups. Michigan pays you 10 cents for every returnable can or bottle. Indiana (30 miles south) does not. There are professional collectors in states that have no refund policy, they gather as many common brands as possible, sell them to a local broker that gives them maybe 2 cents each, then bulk ships them to states where the refund is 10 cents. Yah it is a scam because states with no return policy are not charging the 10C while all our containers get the surcharge, so basically they defraud the citizens of the pay per container state. The only real issue is distance, with price of fuel, it may not be worth it. When two states border each other it works. I see the guys coming north with pickup trucks brimming with trash bags of containers. They know the merchants do not like it so they circulate and get rid of a bag or two per location. Capitalism at it’s finest with scam overlay
Spot on Phil. Needed a pair of jeans, Drove through a Kohls and two other retail parking lots Sunday bout 3-4 pm. empty mostly. I think that is what has kept fuel prices so low for months. Nobody wasting trips anymore. Think where fuel prices would be if there was any decent economic activity.
Buckle up brothers and sisters, it’s not a matter of if, it’s just a matter of when with near 40 trillion in government debt and 5 times that amount in unfunded liabilities like pensions.
ps Retail suckin air, kohls no longer carries wranglers and the other shops didn’t have the simple basic style I wear.
Been aware ALL retail has been scaling back their number of SKU’s for a few years now, and they bitch because we buy from Amazon which is the only place I found them after visiting a total of 4 different stores.
I’ve taken to finding jeans and shirts for work and regular daily wear on eBay. It takes some time searching, but I find some fairly good deals on “new with tags” (priced better than even the normal sale prices at retail stores now). I’m going to guess most of this stuff was probably bought off the clearance rack, so the seller is marking them up to make a few bucks while still undercutting the retailers regular or even sale prices.
They may be last year’s styles, but I don’t give a shit. I haven’t been in a Kohls in over a year now, haven’t set foot inside a Target in nearly 20. Last trip to Walmart was maybe 5 years ago for a deal they had on some motor oil. These days, the only real trips I make to a store are for groceries or to Home Depot/Lowe’s/Menards for parts of material I need in a pinch.
Stuff I can pre plan for (for work, or household projects) gets ordered online in advance and kept in inventory. Still make a periodic stop at the auto parts store, but even most of that I get online, and I stockpile consumables like air and oil filters, bulbs, oil and wiper blades whenever I find a killer deal on those I need for my fleet.
Since I do plumbing repair professionally, I’m driving all over town doing service calls every day. I can thereby observe that regular retail stores and many restaurants are suffering from nearly empty parking lots, even at what would normally be “peak times”. While my work is holding up, I can tell people are getting more price conscious, and some are now declining to do repairs that they consider “non-critical”. Some are choosing to shut off water to a fixture in an infrequently used bathroom, or a broken outside hose bibb that they don’t really need (except to water the lawn, which they are also cutting back on).
All that said, I don’t think the real pain has even started. We are about 2 weeks into Iran shitshow elevated gas and diesel prices, so the trickle down effect that has on product cost is just now beginning to appear, and it’ll be a couple more before it hits full force. Anyone remember when pedo joey bragged about how we were saving 16¢ on hotdogs (or some shit) for our 4th of July parties a few years back? I expect Trump will make some similarly inane and tone deaf announcement this summer after being bitten in the ass by the consequences of more military conquest in the middle east.
Rural King by me sells jeans for 11 bucks a pair. Its cheap chinese denim thats thin, but I don’t care if they get dirty, stained, or rip.
One of the best markers of this sort of thing I had pointed out to me is the ‘toy index’.
When everyone starts selling their convertibles, boats, harleys, 4-wheelers, snowmobiles… toys. Shits getting tough. When they start dropping prices below (what was previously) market value, things are really tough.