Free Money in Scott County, Virginia

(Reclaimed from Bubblews, where it appeared on July 18, 2014. This morning I saw more free money along the road to the computer center.

Image credit: AnitaPeppers at Morguefile.com. It took some looking to find the right image for this post, as Morguefile tends to favor beautiful things. Searching for "soda cans" and "beer cans" brought up images of collecting, recycling, and bottling. Searching for "litter" brought up images of "leaf litter," which is beautiful, and "litters" of young animals, which are beautiful, but after scrolling through many of those I finally found what I was looking for...Free Money!)

Who says the local economy here in Scott County, Virginia, is "down"? Gentle Readers, as I've been walking to and from the store lately, I've been seeing free money just lying on the ground.

No, not just coins, although I have seen a few coins (not only pennies, either). I am talking about scrap metal. I've picked up a good bit, but I've also left a good bit. Since BubbleWS has a minimum length requirement for these short articles, I'll expound a little further:

The Ronald McDonald House has been asking people to snap off only the pop-tops from aluminum cans they are recycling, and send the pop-tops to them. How many bags of pop-tops does it take for the organization to collect one dollar? The obvious subtext here is "Think about what a tiny, pitiful donation your pop-tops are, and also send the Ronald McDonald House a liberal check!" It's a publicity thing. But if you've ever thought about wanting to be close to a child who has to spend a long time in a hospital, you probably don't mind giving the Ronald McDonald House a bit of publicity. So a relative of mine collects bags of pop-tops for the Ronald McDonald House, and I've been snapping off any pop-tops I see to add to the collection.

Since I've been working at the store, every time I've walked the full four-mile distance between home and the store, I've found anywhere from 6 to 20 new pop-tops. And I've been going to a store where I want my clothes and the building to be fresh and tidy; I've not wanted to handle the cans themselves; I've left every one of them on the ground for someone who has a truck and some heavy garbage bags to hold the aluminum cans, with those last drops of sugar and alcohol inside them. And although some of the cans have been mangled when the grass beside the road was mown, I'm still seeing cans I recognize from June.

Every litter bit hurts our image in the eyes of tourists...and every bit of scrap we can recycle before it rusts away beside the road, or punctures somebody's tire, helps us improve our own personal economy. So why are these empty cans becoming landmarks along Route 23? Somebody out there is losing easy money.

This is my Happy Post for today (thanks to TheresaWiza ), because it's good news that people aren't desperate enough to be snapping up the easy money at every opportunity, and it's good news that, when people realize that whoever has been recycling the cans has stopped doing so, the old cans will stop cluttering the side of the road.