For a wedding present, I gave my friend Paul a rust bucket.
Almost literally. I gave him a rusty metal bucket full of metal stuff, some of it rusty.
Oooh, and I also gave him a chest freezer that doesn't work. Some wedding present, eh?
Paul is a guy who goes to our church who collects scrap metal. For years, he used it to supplement his income to help pay for his wife's medications and medical bills; she was blind and wheel-chair-bound and had many other expensive ailments. She was a salt-of-the-earth kind of person, and we were sad (but not surprised) when she finally passed away last year.
This winter, our chest freezer died on on us, and internet searches followed by conversations with repair people convinced us that repairing it (bad compressor) would cost more than replacing it via Craigslist. Since a chest freezer won't fit in our Prius, we asked Paul to help bring the "new" one and take away the old one.
Which is when he told us that soon he'll be moving to Arizona. He's getting married again. So we told him this last set of scrap metal is our wedding gift to him.
I'm so glad for him, and I know his new wife is getting a real catch. But I'm going to miss having him around.
(And now I have to find a new way to recycle scrap metal. Dang.)
Almost literally. I gave him a rusty metal bucket full of metal stuff, some of it rusty.
Oooh, and I also gave him a chest freezer that doesn't work. Some wedding present, eh?
Paul is a guy who goes to our church who collects scrap metal. For years, he used it to supplement his income to help pay for his wife's medications and medical bills; she was blind and wheel-chair-bound and had many other expensive ailments. She was a salt-of-the-earth kind of person, and we were sad (but not surprised) when she finally passed away last year.
This winter, our chest freezer died on on us, and internet searches followed by conversations with repair people convinced us that repairing it (bad compressor) would cost more than replacing it via Craigslist. Since a chest freezer won't fit in our Prius, we asked Paul to help bring the "new" one and take away the old one.
Which is when he told us that soon he'll be moving to Arizona. He's getting married again. So we told him this last set of scrap metal is our wedding gift to him.
I'm so glad for him, and I know his new wife is getting a real catch. But I'm going to miss having him around.
(And now I have to find a new way to recycle scrap metal. Dang.)
What did Paul do? He might be happy to let you know about some of his contacts. Of course, you'll still need a wagon or something to transport some of the things!
ReplyDeleteWe did ask Paul about this. He didn't know of other people who do what he does --- strip the insulation off wires, take apart cassette tapes, etc. He did a lot of work to extract the valuable metals from the mostly-worthless plastic around it. I don't know of someone else who does that part.
DeleteWe do have a waste collection place near us that will probably take scrap metals and electronic appliances. I just haven't looked into that yet.
Ah. Quite interesting, nonetheless.
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