So the email read from my brother back in Greenland, New Hampshire. Seabrook being one of many New Hampshire towns that are the butt of northern hillbilly jokes.
Poll Brown of Dirtbag Challenge fame lives right around the corner from the pallet guy so I stopped in. No one was home but his two headed chopper.
Someone needed a bunch of pallets hauled away. That was easy. But where do I dump them? All earthly possessions can be divided into one of three categories: things people will buy from you, things people will take if you tell them it’s free, and things you can’t give away and end up paying to dump.
Being a professional junk man – not just a guy with a truck – means you have to know a lot of markets. As we’ve seen recently, markets rise and fall, so you also have to pay attention to the fluctuations. Last I heard, pallets were selling for 3 bucks a pop but only if they’re oak. I had a mixed load of oak and plywood pallets, so how do I name a price for my client? I might not be able to get rid of the plywood skids and then what? I pay to dump them. Not a pro move at all.
What I do is tell my client, “Look.” I start with “Look” because it means, “Look me in the eye. I’m about to be very honest with you.” It also has an air of pompous authority to it as well, and when you’re a junkman, you can get away with that. So I say “Look Marco, I might be able to sell these pallets for three bucks each. But I can’t be sure. So I’m gonna see where they end up, then I’ll tell you how much it’s gonna cost.”
If you’re client doesn’t know you, they might get nervous. Maybe you’re gonna rip ‘em off. So let em know the score.
“I’m not gonna rip you off. If I can sell them, you don’t have to pay to dump them. It works out for both of us.”
Build a sense of camaraderie in this adventure. You’re a junk man. You’re a pro junk man. Marco had no idea someone would buy used pallets. But he’s running a business. He doesn’t want to spend two hours hauling pallets across town for thirty bucks. Don’t hide the facts, they won’t hurt you.
Then again, there’s plenty of times when you’re behooved to just keep your mouth shut. I’ve behooved myself into hundreds of pounds of copper, antique paintings, old jazz records, you look around the flea market and I’ve been behooved with all that kind of stuff. Because someone didn’t know the markets and I kept my mouth shut.
A professional junk man is the last man to pass judgment on inanimate objects before they meet their maker in the landfill. I am a God of castaways. Without devolving too far, heaven is akin to living forever, like a fine diamond necklace. Every generation is told of its value and no one throws it out. Staying out of the landfill is salvation. The necklace has been saved. The landfill is Hell. The junkman is God. I cast things into the bowels of the earth.
Remember the three categories of possessions we discussed earlier? Let’s focus in on things people will pay for. I don’t care if we’re talking about poker chips or pallets, different ones fetch a different price. I already tipped my hand when I explained oak pallets are worth three bucks. At the buyback center I learned a qualifying truth: only 40 by 48 inch square pallets are worth three bucks each. And as of last month, they are only worth $1.50. It’s a volatile time in the industry. The gentleman at the pallet building warehouse paid me six dollars for the few pallets I had that met the requirements. He took for free the odd sized wooden ones. Then he shook his head sadly at me when I asked about the plywood jobs. He could not take them from me, not even for free.
Notice the writing on that pallet. It is stamped “Quikcrete” and says, “$14.00 deposit on return”. However, this man I am doing business with will not pay it. He was a generalist. I would have to take this pallet to a pallet specialist in order to get that high value. But there was no time. I did not know where the specialist was. Not even Google knew. I didn’t have space to store it until Antiques Roadshow came around with answers. So I gave it away for free.
This afternoon was a condensed lesson in buying and selling. Give me one hundred baseball cards and there will be one that is worth more alone than all the rest combined. As a junkman, I must know that baseball cards in general have a value and I can spare them from the hell of landfill. But I’ll never get rich with a modern day Mickey Mantle because I am a dilettante of detritus. I can’t know all markets, I just know they are out there. I get it for free and sell it cheap. But who needs riches when you have the glory of god?
consider becoming a dairy farmer. Especially if you hate driving around all day running errands. A dairy farmer never leaves the farm. Not that I could fix the missing Flash plugin with baling wire and JB Weld. Had to drive across town to the Apple store for that. But as this economy starts to compress into a broken vending machine I should be spending more time at home pruning back the Jade tree and patching the ripped moving blankets. Instead I’m working harder to find work than I ever worked on working. Plus I’m out buying glass to replace the pane Matt and I broke in a domestic wrestling match. I can’t just take a break and read some magazines on the couch. Gotta get to work looking for work. Instead of firing up the French press for some homebrew I head down to the coffee shop hoping some hauling job will come of it. Never have gotten work standing alone in the kitchen drinking joe.
May I introduce to you, the silky vocal stylings of beautiful Haley McGlamery as she interprets the classic “Holy Shit I’m Sad.”
photo posted from my iPhone
This is the first bar I ever went in
Got back to my California roots. I dug some holes for Rus down in Woodside. About noon he comes over with a t shirt in his hand. “Got yer phone on ya?” He asks as he holds the shirt up. It says Redwood Rental on the back. He’s had the t-shirt in his truck for years because he loses business cards.
I took off in my truck to pick up a vibrator plate – a machine like a push mower but much much heavier, and a large steel plate that hammers up and down and compacts dirt for foundation work. After two hours walking in smaller and smaller circles I shut it down. Both my hands continued to vibrate for another ten minutes.
“Hey Locke,” I said. He was wearing his beaten old Crocodile Dundee hat and a flannel shirt from Walmart. “How long you think this Depression’s gonna last?”
“I’ve been depressed long as I can remember.”
“Maybe big Pharmaceutical can come up with a cure. Get Barack on the phone. You just solved the economic crisis!”
“It’s to late for me. My boat’s got a lotta holes in it. I’ll be lucky if I have cold beer this time next week.”
Things haven’t changed down here in Woodside. Building a riding ring. Running equipment. Heading to the Pioneer Saloon at three and drinking perhaps the last of cold beer while women with a small meth problem parade around in lingerie selling raffle tickets to win panties or a drink. It’s a strange world, isn’t it?
Bedtime Story is the new band I’m in. We’re playing a show tonite at Retox Lounge at 628 20th Street off Third. We go on at ten. If you gut nuthin’ bettah, why not try it?
photo posted from my iPhone
Well Miss Sarah Bean gave me this old highboy to haul away and here I am trying to sell it. I gave it a polish and fixed the drawer pulls and I’d take 50 bucks for it. Please hurry, Sarah may want it back now that its looking good.
Another thing the cell phone has killed? The snooze bar. Who wants that ugly am/fm clock radio taking up space when the cell has an alarm built in? I haven’t had a decent days work in weeks, so I’m digging deep in the recesses of the garage, looking for anything that might sell. Who knows someone who’s been laid off in the last month, raise your hand. Only time will tell if people will be buying used furniture off craigslist. If you’re broke, why bother? I got a load of cardboard in the truck and I’m looking for the guy who buys used pallets because I have twenty of them. It’s time to start having children and selling them. ANyone else have any bright ideas?
I’ll take twenty for it. The arms both broke but I glued them back together. Real sturdy.
How about a hundy for this vanity? It comes with original pulls and has the matching bench. Come on. It’s gotta be worth more than that.
I broke up with my girlfriend two months ago and I’m in two bands and sometimes I want to quit them both and sometimes I don’t like my friends and I want to move to Australia and not have a single relationship with anyone but my pistol and my rifle.
My facebook profile doesn’t reflect any of that. I would definitely bring a laptop with that satellite internet connection if I did go to Australia. I’d sell all my furniture and have a party for all the people I’m tired of and I’d give them my books and my cds and most of my clothes and I have a bunch of plants in the house and my roommate Matty won’t remember to water them so I’ll find homes for them before I pack my bag and say “Later Dude” to the good ol’ USA.
I would pretend I was Asian so all the white people in Australia wouldn’t talk to me and I’d rent a bicycle and just start riding till I found the outback. I’d do something symbolic with my bike. Not much of it would burn so no sense lighting it on fire. The symbolic thing would be an apology for always seeing things racially.
This is one of those times when I don’t like anyone. That’s what the outback is for. I might try Nevada if I don’t get much for my furniture.
A lot of people like people. They are the ones who talk about community. Locally owned. Know your farmer. The guy in the neighborhood who sharpens your knives and your scissors in his garage. Borrowing your neighbors ladder. Saying, “Oh, whatever, I know them.” They like people. They forgive. Are tolerant. People who love people are the happiest people.
What good would it do to fly over all that ocean and get to Australia just because I was kinda cranky and didn’t want to talk? That would have been stupid! So stupid. I’ve had stronger urges to join the Marines than to move to a desert. And there would be a lot of people around, if I signed up. It’s good to talk these things through.
Most towns on a river put all the fancy restaurants with decks right on its edge. But in New Orleans the Mississippi is hidden by a twelve foot levee so you never see water, just the house or the stack of a passing tanker. Four decks up a pilot steers towards the ocean and you are sitting in Jackson Square eating a beignet and your eyes meet. It is the only reason you can believe a mighty river is just behind that concrete.
A character by the name of the gray ghost goes through town covering any graffiti he sees. Actually it’s a rebel crew and sometimes they cover up murals that have been paid for and properly permitted with the city. Such a thorough job is done that I saw no street art in the city. People feel a sense of uselessness and don’t even try.
I’m not a fan of most graffiti. It’s like peeing on someone’s property, trying to claim the corner as yours. That’s boring. In New Orleans the effect has trickled up and you see no hand painted signs anywhere. Almost every business had a sign made at a sign shop. Computer graphics. Glossy banners. Vinyl letters.
In most California towns you’ll find a muffler shop with a hand painted mock up of a guy installing the catalytic converter. The name of the papuseria will be blocked out with an untrained hand. A sense of paint and brush and bonding the name to the building is all around. In New Orleans just untie the banner and the building is nothing again. With paint the memory lingers after the eviction.
There’s been a riff in my head since high school and a lyric that matches it. “holy shit I’m sad”. That line has been in my head twenty years and tonite the rest came. Maybe not all of it, but I finally figured out what I was sad about.
Holy shit I’m sad
Baby Jesus knew
He was the son of God
But Joseph was his dad
And that’s a broken home
So there’s only one verse and no chorus, but that won’t stop me from recording it tomorrow. Has anyone heard discussion about that? By getting Mary pregnant without Joseph, God made Jesus an outcast in that society. God prevented Joseph from being a father in the fullest sense of the word. I wonder what effect that had on the “father” son relationship?
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