Recycling soda cans Bullfeathers

/0 Comments/in /by

Back in the 1960s me and a couple of friends we riding in a car a couple of miles outside of town. We passed two people walking along the road picking up soda bottles. My friend sitting by the passenger door threw his soda bottle out the window for the two to pick up. We were immediately pulled over by the CHP and he was given a ticket for littering. No good deed goes unpunished.

In the 60s soda bottles got you four cents. This was from the bottler, with no government help. Today you get five cents through a government  process.

A couple of days ago I was taking my afternoon walk around the park and there was a aluminum soda can laying on the grass. There were other people in the park. It’s busy place. The can was for 16 ounces of green tea and it looked like it had been there since the night before.

People use to fight over a beer can laying on the ground. People use to stop their car, get out, and pick up soda cans laying by the road.

What happened? Inflation. In the 60s a nickel was still made from nickel. Now, the metal, nickel cost to much to make money out of. Or is it money isn’t worth enough to make it out of something valuable.

I’m still waiting for the five dollar plastic piece that Robert A. Heinlein talked about in his science fiction books that he wrote in the 950s.

If the State of California is going to do something about litter and get people to recycle then it has to admit that there has been inflation since the price of soda, water and beer can-and-bottles was set back in the 1970s. On top of that an article in Scientific American detailed how aluminum soda and beer cans are now made with less aluminum than just a few years ago. Have the recycle dealers changed the amount they pay per pound? Or are people who take their cans in get less than the price per can because the cans weight less.

Recycle, the public says Bullfeathers. Make it worth it.

 

Write on, draw on.    Professor Hyram Voltage

 

Writing in a coffee shop; Bullfeathers

/0 Comments/in /by

Writer after writer write or blog about the wonders of writing in a coffee shop. Don’t believe it. The other day the city was paving the street in front of where I live. The road would be closed most of the day. The noise from the road crew last time they did this was bad being only a couple of meters (12 to 20 feet) from the street. The smell of hot oil and tar was not something I was looking forward too on a warm fall day.

I packed my tablet and headed for the coffee shop. I opened the door to the coffee shop, stopped and turned around. I went back to the car and got a jacket. It was nice outside but inside the coffee shop was almost as cold as the inside of my ice box. A good move by the manager to sell more coffee. They were selling a lot of coffee. The staff was bouncing around and the drive up window had a steady stream of cars going through.

I had been to the coffee shop before and this time they had bagels. With a bagel and some tea I sat down at a table in the middle of the shop to do some writing. I would have liked to sit in the corner near the only electrical outlet in the shop, but the same guy that was hogging the corner table last time was at it again. At least this time he wasn’t hogging two tables. He had the same old suitcase on wheels with him. I would need the power outlet in a couple of hours. The old battery in the tablet doesn’t hold as much charge as it use to.

I should have brought head phones,  but I don’t have a good pair that would block out the loud but not objectionable music. The singing distracts me, and I believe it would distract any writer. Writing is hard work and you need every brain cell you have working on your writing.

Didn’t get good and started when the police arrived and arrested a person sitting outside the coffee shop. Great stuff to put in a story, but I’m not writing that type of story.

Then two elderly gentlemen came in and started talking. Being a little older they had hearing problems so they had to talk loud over the music. It wouldn’t have been so bad but one guy had to tell the other about how he cheated his ex-wife out of child support by semi-voluntarily getting laid-off.

Other writers talk about how much writing they get done at coffee shops. They either have thicker skins than I do or live in fantasy cities where ordinary troubles don’t occur.

All I can say is Bull-feathers.

Write on, draw on.                 Professor Hyram Voltage.