Channeling the Beverly Hillbillies

I channeled my inner Beverly Hillbilly last week. We had a pickup load of junk piled up in the back, just like old Jed, Granny, Jethro and Elly Mae, my friends on the CBS station from 1962 to 1971.

The junk was there ... but Randy didn't make me sit in the back.

With all the rain that fell last week, Randy was looking for ways to keep our employee busy. (Side note: We are up to 11.80 inches for the month of May.)

Cleaning up the scrap pile is one of those jobs that doesn't get done otherwise. They ended up with two pickup loads full ... and a neater farmstead. Bonus!

After doing a little "market research," Randy opted to take the tossed-away treasures to Heavy Metal in Pratt. Even though I grew up on a farm north of Pratt and it was the "go-to" town of my childhood, I'd never been to that part of town.

“Weeeell, doggies! That’s just a couple a wagon races up the road,” as Jed Clampett might say.

Heavy Metal Recyclers takes copper, brass, aluminum, scrap metal and prepared metal.  You weigh your loaded vehicle on the scale, then drive to the unloading area.

Just like most guys, Randy admired the "big boy toys."

They used a couple of different attachments to get the job done. They used a magnet to lift out of one pickup. They used a fork-like grabber for the other pickup.

The operator was really skilled at getting the materials to fall where he wanted them to go.

We complicated his job with a little "wheeling and dealing" that happened in the scrapyard.

Someone who brought in a load of aluminum cans saw the broken bale mover in the back of one pickup. He offered to buy it from Randy. So the recycling employee off-loaded the bale mover, took off the other materials, then re-loaded it.

It stayed on the other pickup for the reweigh. We left behind 1,940 pounds of scrap hauled in on that pickup. And then we made the other transaction outside the scrapyard's fence, transferring the bale mover to the buyer's pickup. The guy had brought in $70 worth of aluminum cans. He paid us $60 for the bale mover.

Just like Jed Clampett's "black gold," our "rusty gold" paid off, too. We brought home $213 in cold, hard cash ... plus that 60 bucks!

It was worth the trip to another part of Pratt!