Tuesday, August 03, 2010

hey! you! get offa my truck!

“SURE!” I said excitedly “I’ll be glad to haul that metal off for you.” What grabbed my interest was the small pile of copper laying there with the old lawn mower, chipper shredder and other heavy household items. She was also throwing in rusty old steel barrel bands, a destroyed toaster and some general crap that I had to find a home for. We loaded up about half of my truck with the junk and I headed to the recycler dude. I had carried stuff to him before and for a VERY small amount of metal received about $110, worth the ride for sure. Friday I pulled in and both bay doors were closed. It seems the guy took an early weekend, closing before 4:30pm and leaving a note saying he’d be open at 8:30 in the morning. The next morning I had nothing much to do so I decided to ride back up to Raleigh and get that crap off of my truck. I figgered I’d stop by my dad’s and see if he had anything to contribute. Of course, you’re not gonna stop by your dad’s and get away in mere minutes, it took close to an hour to get away from there…and with nothing added to the pile. Finally, down the road I headed to the capital city. Just over the next hill, my uncle was picking blueberries. I hadn’t seen him since his wife died so I really needed to stop and say “Hey”. “Don’t you want some blueberries?” he asked. “SURE!” I said excitedly again. I poked around in my truck for a plastic grocery bag and shot the shit with him while I picked and ate, a damn fine breakfast as it were. Thirty minutes or so went by when I decided I’d had enough. We said goodbyes and I cranked the truck and pulled into the next driveway, my sister’s house. Thirty minutes later I was finally leaving and headed to the metal place. I drive for the 35 minutes it takes to get there and pulled in again to find the doors closed! “SATURDAY 8:30-12” the sign said as I looked at my phone to see what time it was, “12:10”. I remembered my uncle telling me about another metal place in town and sure enough it was closed too. So after a brief stop at Jack’s house to talk about the record I headed back home with not a damn thing to show for my efforts, some 4 hours after leaving. “It’ll have to wait until Monday” I thought. So the ugly bunch of crap sat on my truck the rest of the day and all day Sunday. Monday morning I was looking forward to freeing myself from this cursed metal thing so I was there at my original dude’s place bright and early at 8:40. I told him I was having trouble finding him and he looked in the back and quipped “Well, you ain’t got nothing for me!” “What about that copper?” I said. “OH!...oh yeah!” He picked the pieces out and threw them on the scale. He told me the weight but all I heard was “$29.08”. OK, that was gas money. “The rest of that stuff is steel, you gotta go to the other place. He takes everything!” So being that it was time to go to work I figgered I’d wait until afterwards to drop the rest of the pile off. I worked hard all day and took off about 3:50pm thinking that gave me plenty of time to get there if they too closed at 4:30pm. Of course, I get there and the rude young fellow says “We’re CLOSED! That’s why the gate says CLOSED!” “Well, it was open enough to get into!” I said. There were no closing times on the gate. You had to drive in and around to read them. “I’ll take the shit to the dump!” I muttered, driving off. FIVE times I tried to rid of that shit! I never made it to the dump so as of right now it’s still on the back of my truck. I’m gonna try ONE more time today! If I can’t get rid of it this morning I’m gonna pull down a damn dirt road and start throwing the shit in the woods! Thanks a lot, lady!

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