Recycling

Here's my adventures in recycling.......adventure is putting it mildly. You will soon see why it's putting it mildly.

Let's set the stage, imagine finally convincing your husband to go through all of the crap that has been in boxes in the garage since before we moved into the house. I labeled and dated all of the boxes and there were some from April 2005! Okay that's 5 years of sitting in a box, if we haven't needed it in 5 years maybe it was time for the stuff to go. We rented a huge dumpster for all of the trash and we went to town. In the process of going through everything I was hopeful to find my old photo albums and my kids baby books. How bad is that? I have no idea where those precious things are, but I can tell you that we had 5 boxes of motorcycle parts!!! 3 boxes of books (my bad) and a multitude of boxes of miscellaneous crap. We also found the boxes of copper wire that Matt had collected when the house was being built. He would come up to the house and collect all of the scraps of wire which filled two little boxes and then he also found a bucket filled with brass fittings. I have no idea where that stuff came from but all I really cared about was getting rid of it.

Set the stage for the next day, it's Monday and I research online for a recycling company that takes metal. I find one that LOOKS like it's in an okay part of town on the Google map. Bwahahahahaha, that's funny now. I plug the address into my GPS and off I go. The GPS takes me right to the place, it wasn't too bad, I get out grab a box of the copper wire and walk into the center. I tell one guy what I have and he gets this horrified look on his face and tells me that they don't handle metal like that anymore, they only handle cans, bottles, and plastics. He then points down the street and tells me that there's a place just a few blocks down that takes metal. Okay, I hop back into my mom mobile and head down the street. As I am driving it is getting more and more apparent that this isn't the best part of town, but I am here, and it's a bright sunny day what could go wrong.......

I turn down the street with Skee's Recycling Center on it, and am pretty well horrified at the neighborhood that I just drove into. I suck it up, and walk with a box of the wire into the yard. This place was crazy, it was filled with piles of metal (duh, I know it's a recycling center) and there are forklifts driving all over and the entire center was surrounded with tin fencing and topped with concertina wire, you know that lovely razor sharp barbwire they use around prisons.

I finally get the attention of one of the guys who works there and tell him I have copper wire and some brass, he tells me to go get everything and set it by the scale. So, I make two more trips out to my car and back with arm loads of stuff. The one guy who was helping me apparently was the manager of the center, he takes one look at the copper wire, and goes, "You found all of this!!?" I told him that my husband had been collecting it, and I just cleaned out my garage. He then whips out his camera and tells me to go stand next to the copper wire. He proceeds to take my photo with all of the copper wire!! This other guy who does the work of weighing out all of my stuff when he is done asks me which car is mine. So I tell him the silver Saturn, and he goes out and writes down my license plate number! He comes back and hands me the slip with all of the weights of the different stuff. Did you know that copper wire has different types? I sure didn't.

I take my slip up to the "counter" I say "counter" because it really was an enclosed booth with bullet proof glass. There was a little square cut out and the manager guy takes my drivers license and swipes it, then he tells me that he is required by law to take my right thumb print. Okay, whatever, I have submitted to a photo, my car license plate number, my drivers license so what's giving him my thumb print, no big deal. He rings up my tag, and tells me that the total is $126.03 and that I can come back on Thursday to collect my money. At this point I was pretty horrified at the thought of having to come back so I asked him if he could mail me a check. He was a little startled at my question and he told me sure, he could do that. I explained that I lived up in Coarsegold and I didn't want to have to drive back down the hill. He then told me that he would give me the money right then. That it would be a $1,000 fine for him for giving me the money early, but he would do it for me. I told him Thank You, and quickly left the place.

As I was walking back to my car, I saw an obviously homeless man smacking something with a hammer, and across the street was a truck with a camper shell and they were unloading God knows what out of the back. I quickly headed back towards the freeway and as I was driving under the freeway a woman walked across the street in front of me wearing no shoes and not walking very straight.

It was about this time that I realized how very sheltered I am, and that I like being sheltered. I like having a nice clean house and not having to worry about druggies or crazies coming into my yard. I like having my life nice and orderly and clean. Did I already say clean? Well, I am going to say it again, I like having my life be clean. This part of Fresno should be in a "scared straight" video. All in all the men who worked at Skee's were very nice. Inside the center I felt okay, not comfortable, but okay, but the instant I walked outside the fence it was like walking into a different world. A world I am lucky enough to not have to live in. It was just very surprising to me how incredibly sheltered my life has been. And that the next time we have wire to recycle MATT will be doing the recycling!