One Man's Junk

I want to put my Hillbilly Husband on TV with his own show: One
Man's Junk. I think I will call him HH from now on. HH finds so many
treasures we are running out of room. Way back when I started my
blog, I told you about the perfectly good swimming pool that he
stored in the back of the truck for a while. My picture of the outhouse
shows the flexible sewer pipe that he found in a subdivision near work.
We have a barn, a shed, a garage, and 1/4 of a basement filled with
his treasures.

Monday night we were cruising along on the way to town to a Pee
Wee Baseball game, and all at once the Yukon slid to a stop. I slid
out of my seat and rammed into the dash (always wear your seatbelt,
kids--and darn you, leather seats!). We were going down a little hill
onto a low-water bridge, and HH put the car in park and got out.
Yeah, we live in the boonies. He walked back and picked up something
out of the road. Some piece of metal that he said was a linchpin. At
first he said he was getting it out of the road so a car (meaning me,
who is so blind and old and stupid that I would run over that metal
chunk is what I think he meant) would not hit it. Then he said, "That
is worth $10. I'll take it home and use it to pull the haywagon or the
lawnmower trailer."

I should have known before I married him that there was a reason
the people at the apartment complex pool said in unison: "Here
comes Sanford and Sons," when HH and his boys pulled in driving
a multicolored Chevy pickup. He can't pass up a bargain. By that
I mean something cast off along the road. He even got me to doing it.
I once stopped right in front of the Daily Journal office to pick up
a piece of white J-channel, which is the corner stuff that vinyl siding
hooks into. And to make matters even more embarrassing than
stopping in the middle of a main road in town and getting out and
trying to stuff an 8' strip of vinyl into a Toyota is the fact that HH
said, "Well, I'm glad you got it, but I can't use it. It's been run over
too many times."

So we started teasing HH about his $10 linchpin treasure, and he
said, "That's a lot of money. You boys have it too easy. When I
was a kid I had to work for my money. Do you know what my
first job paid?"

And we all answered "You pumped gas for all the soda and candy
you could eat." Because we have heard this many times before.
HH said after the first few days, he couldn't eat near as much candy
or soda. He worked 12 hours a day on weekends for candy.

Then he told us a new story. He shot birds with his BB gun for the
lady next door. Being a smartypants, I said, "What, like that would
get rid of them? More would just fly in to take their place."

HH said, "She didn't do it to get rid of them. It was for her cats.
She felt sorry for them because they watched birds out the window
and couldn't catch them."

"They were for the cats to play with?"

"No. For the cats to eat."

"Eeewww."

"She even bought our BBs, and paid us 5 cents a bird."

Now the boys were really laughing. "Dad! You did all
that for 5 cents a bird? Hey! I just saw 15 cents fly by!"

"Wasn't that a lot of work for a few cents?"

"We shot 4 or 5 a day."

"WooHoo! 20 or 25 cents. What did you spend that on?"

"That was a lot of money back then. I could get a chocolate
soda for 5 cents."

"Eeeww. No wonder. It was a chocolate soda."

"Hey, I thought you got all the soda you could drink anyway."

"No. This was before, when I was younger. Go on and make
fun. I had to work for my money."

"Yeah, like you wouldn't shoot birds anyway."

On the way home after the game, there was a car parked in
the dirt down by that creek. "Look," said smart-alecky #1 son.
"I bet that guy is looking for his linchpin."