Ragpicker's Paradise

As the guy pulled away from our neighbor's house yesterday with a trailer piled high with junk—including a wrecked truck that had been an eye-sore for a long time—I couldn't help but think that America is a ragpicker's paradise.  With all due respect to the real ragpickers—and I don't mean Mark Knopfler—who work harder and have less than ANY person in this country, being willing to use other people's trash means that this continent is virtually a Garden of Eden.

Let's start with vehicles.  Despite the nearly non-stop moaning in the pop media and on the campaign trail about hard times, there is no one in the United States today who is driving an old car.  Buzzing up and down the street and tailgating me where ever I go, the whole county is full of new cars—some of them being driven by people who I know are unemployed.  In fact, I was talking with Weston over at Reese Automotive the other day and he said that the recession has brought them very little repair business because low interest rates make people feel like they'd rather have a loan on a new car than pay for repairs on their current car.  Evidently vehicles are simply made to be consumed and thrown away—not repaired.  Which is where the ragpicker comes in.  If you are willing to drive a car with a hundred thousand miles on it and maybe a few scratches in the paint, you can have essentially free transportation.  People will be practically throwing the thing away, and you might be able to drive it for another ten years.

But, it doesn't stop there.  Furniture, appliances, boats, and even sidewalks.  If you are willing to haul it off, clean it up, and make a few small repairs, you hardly have to buy anything anymore.  From the yard sales, to the thrift stores, to the dumpsters and the roadsides, you can find just about anything you need.  Sure it takes hard work and a willingness to fall behind the Joneses, but you don't have to have a lot of money to have a lot of pretty nice stuff in this country.  (We've told the story before about how we got our living room sofa.  A friend was on his way to the dump with an old couch he didn't want, but decided to stop at our house.  We hauled it from his pick-up truck into our living room and have used it ever since.)

At Rural Ways, we are not indiscriminant ragpickers.  We recognize that it does you no good to pick up something that you don't have the ability to repair.  Take small engines.  If you can't fix the lawn mower yourself—which I can't—taking it to the shop will probably cost more than it is worth.  So, we generally buy lawn mowers new ($99 at Walmart at the end of the summer), use them for a few years, and then recycle them.  But, many things don't require a lot of skill to re-use, so you just have to keep your eyes open as you're going up and down the road.  For example, right now I am looking for some old field fence to use in the yard, so if you see anything laying in the gutter, let me know.  Just watch out for tailgaters.