Post by farmertrappe on Mar 19, 2014 20:01:12 GMT -5
I saw an old thread about returnable bottles and recycling and thought i would tell my tale. Iv'e always used recycling as a way to make extra money since I was about 10 years old. One of the keys is to get payed while your doing it 
My father was a YMCA summer camp director for the first 30 years or so of my life. My brother and i started to collect soda and beer cans early in April till the end of Oct. on the camp, it would take several truck loads to cash it all in. We could keep half, other half to the bank. When I was 13 my Dad hired me for weekend staff, $6.00 a weekend all day Sat till 2pm Sunday. I would collect cans while working and we would also sort them out of the trash run on Sunday afternoon. The next year he gave me a raise to $12.00 a weekend and started to take taxes out. 
When i was about 14 and in the Boy scouts we use to make money all kinds of ways to support our monthly camping trips. I was only around during the school year, but we did several fund raisers during that time. One year we collected news papers, we collected TONS of them and got like $22 a ton. We made hundreds of dollars for the troop. So me and two friends set it up to use my folks garage and my buddies folks to store the papers for one month and cash in on our own. We just happened to wear our scout tee shirts when we went around to collect every Sat. Using wagons the three of us collected enough papers in three weeks to stuff the garages full, man we worked it. We made like $40. each, tall cotton back in the mid seventies. We used the camps 14 person van with the seats removed to haul the papers, my poor Mom had to drive us. It took like ten trips-we did not pay for fuel, but got Ma some flowers to say thanks. I worked construction in the early 80s for a short spell, picked up every little piece of copper the plumbers dropped, $10 hr. When i settled in MD and was working for others in the marine trade, I would always show up for a delivery 15 mins early and pick up cans at the ramps. The owners figured out what I was doing and bitched a little. But the customers were always so happy, boat in the water and running when they got there and me with a hand full of cans. When they realized I was making like $300 a year from those cans they figured what the hell let him go. Oh I was making $15 an hour while collecting them cans, only took a few mins. here and there while waiting. Since I've been self employed I always separate scrape, electrical stuff, manifolds pay good. $400.00 or so a year CASH. Hell I still bend over for pennies in the parking lot.
If anyone is still reading this, my favorite story about my Dad is when he and I would be driving that big ole van back and forth on weekends during the school year to the camp. Back then you had to toss 15 cents into a toll bucket to get off and on I95 in Delaware. He would stop if no one was behind us and I would hop out and pick up the change on the road that missed the bucket. I would save it in the ash tray and buy us hot dogs at the dairy queen on the way home Sunday, 20 cents each.
I miss the old man.
My father was a YMCA summer camp director for the first 30 years or so of my life. My brother and i started to collect soda and beer cans early in April till the end of Oct. on the camp, it would take several truck loads to cash it all in. We could keep half, other half to the bank. When I was 13 my Dad hired me for weekend staff, $6.00 a weekend all day Sat till 2pm Sunday. I would collect cans while working and we would also sort them out of the trash run on Sunday afternoon. The next year he gave me a raise to $12.00 a weekend and started to take taxes out. 
When i was about 14 and in the Boy scouts we use to make money all kinds of ways to support our monthly camping trips. I was only around during the school year, but we did several fund raisers during that time. One year we collected news papers, we collected TONS of them and got like $22 a ton. We made hundreds of dollars for the troop. So me and two friends set it up to use my folks garage and my buddies folks to store the papers for one month and cash in on our own. We just happened to wear our scout tee shirts when we went around to collect every Sat. Using wagons the three of us collected enough papers in three weeks to stuff the garages full, man we worked it. We made like $40. each, tall cotton back in the mid seventies. We used the camps 14 person van with the seats removed to haul the papers, my poor Mom had to drive us. It took like ten trips-we did not pay for fuel, but got Ma some flowers to say thanks. I worked construction in the early 80s for a short spell, picked up every little piece of copper the plumbers dropped, $10 hr. When i settled in MD and was working for others in the marine trade, I would always show up for a delivery 15 mins early and pick up cans at the ramps. The owners figured out what I was doing and bitched a little. But the customers were always so happy, boat in the water and running when they got there and me with a hand full of cans. When they realized I was making like $300 a year from those cans they figured what the hell let him go. Oh I was making $15 an hour while collecting them cans, only took a few mins. here and there while waiting. Since I've been self employed I always separate scrape, electrical stuff, manifolds pay good. $400.00 or so a year CASH. Hell I still bend over for pennies in the parking lot. If anyone is still reading this, my favorite story about my Dad is when he and I would be driving that big ole van back and forth on weekends during the school year to the camp. Back then you had to toss 15 cents into a toll bucket to get off and on I95 in Delaware. He would stop if no one was behind us and I would hop out and pick up the change on the road that missed the bucket. I would save it in the ash tray and buy us hot dogs at the dairy queen on the way home Sunday, 20 cents each.
I miss the old man.
