Neighbor Bobs beer cans

When it rains, it pours.

Yesterday I wrote about having to ditch a pair of booze bottles, lest there be raised eyebrows and a lecture.

Today I opened the shed and the entire thing was full of bags containing beer cans,

I had forgotten about that. Ooops.

A couple of weeks ago when I was at sea, I got a call from Neighbor Bob, who was then at camp. He was cleaning up for the season and wanted to ditch a bunch of beer cans for the same reason I ditched my booze bottles yesterday.

This was no lousy half-bag of weekend empties from a party, this was a complete decade collection. He's had that camp for 10 years now, and his site is in a pretty heavy traffic area in the campground.

Bob's pretty outgoing, so a lot of people drop by, many of them carrying a beer. The empty of which ends up in Bob's trash bag. Things add up, and Bob sort of lost count. He'd store the empties under his trailer in 55 gallon contractor clean-up bags until it was time to recycle them.

After 10 years, it's time. Mainly because there was probably no more room.

The collection of empties in itself is pretty impressive, but when you think about it, not really excessive. We're talking about an entire decade of empties here. Ten years worth.

Ten years worth of practically ANYTHING will create a pretty impressive pile.

On the other hand, if Mrs Bob saw the pile, she'd blow the whistle and throw out a penalty marker. Fifteen yards. It never occurs to many people to ask a few questions before you pass judgement.

Knowing how to count helps.

Divide the number of bags by ten, divide the quotient of that by the number of days spent at camp in a year and divide that by AT LEAST three, as probably at least 2/3s of the cans came from passers-by and people that dropped my for campfires. Couple that with the help given by camp visitors, and other helpful people like myself and the figure really isn't all that bad.

It's probably not going to win him the Mother Teresa award, but Bob's not really a lush, either.

Anyway, I'm taking the cans to the scrap dealers today and Bob isn't getting a single dime of the money.

I'm spending every nickle of it on beer for Bob to take back to camp with him.

He's been a good neighbor.



More: Wx broke and I took the Miata out for a fall ride to go shopping. It was chilly, and getting near helmet and goggles weather, which sucks. If there is salt on the road, the Miata will stay inside.

That rum bottle I wrote about did NOT come from last Christmas, it came from last HALLOWEEN. Bob just called for something and asked me if I was going to be home for Halloween, and he was disappointed when I said I'd be at sea.

He said the neighborhood was going to miss my Hot Buttered Rum except for Louise, who has a stick up her ass, anyway. She's an idiot that loves to go through life ruining things for everyone else. Last Halloween when I was giving the parents of Trick or Treaters HBRs, Louise started griping and Dottie P. slapped her and cussed her out for trying to ruin my HBR thing.

There was almost a cat fight in my garage. Louise got talked out of calling the cops when I made it clear that I would testify that she had come in and started the trouble. Poor Louise's kids are constantly picked on by the other kids because of her crap. As much as I dislike Louise, I pity her poor kids.

After Bob called, I wandered over to his house. Their daughter now has a driver's license and Bob was eager to have her take over a bunch of local errands, which really would be a win-win situation,

His wife started worriedly talking about how the majority of traffic accidents happen close to home.

With a straight face, I suggested that they could aviod that problem by simply moving.

Bob snarfed iced tea, and his wife, after she figured it out and picked up on my sarcasm, looked somewhat embarrassed. Then she saw the deal as win-win after she got over feeling dumb.

Cool! Bob's life got easier.




I had to go shopping today, which I guess is OK.

I picked up some grub and got in line. After a moment or 2, a sweet little old lady fell in behind me. She looked pretty spunky for her age, say mid 80s.

I looked in the magazine rack by the register and saw what I was looking for, a magazine with a movie starlet on it. I skipped the one with the bikini'd teenager, and got the one with the 20-something starlet in the sequined gown.

I looked at the cover, and looked at the old lady a few times until she looked a little nervous.

Then I turned to her and modestly asked her, "Is this really you?"

You should have seen her blush slightly and watched her face light up.

"I used to have hair like that," she said.

"That really is you. I thought so," I answered back. "The picture was taken a couple years back, You can't fool me."

'Thank you," she said.

I knew I had just made her day, and I checked my wallet. Making her day hadn't cost me a cent.






From the Gospel According to Piccolo