Hobos

Earlier this morning I worked on removing a few parts from an old camp trailer. It seemed like a hobo thing to do. The trailer is too old and worn out to use it for anything, so scrapping it is about the only phase left in its life. I've gutted another trailer before, but this one is a little different due to a particular phase in this camper's lifetime.
When it was younger, barely road worthy, my brother and his friend purchased it to deck it out and turn it into some form of space arcade game. They invested quite a bit of money into it only to abandon it before finishing the job. It has been resting at our family farm for several years; since 2003 I believe, when it received it's last inspection.
So when I say that I was removing parts from this trailer, more than anything I was taking the copper wiring and lighting, which I will be using for another project.

All the while that I was taking these things from the trailer, the thought came to me that this was precisely what hobos do. They can probably get quite a lot of good stuff just from collecting it and in all honesty if they sold it they could probably make a lot of money and survive. I expect I took $300 worth of items in an hour's time(if I bought it from the store--to sell it they would get much less). That's not a lot but it could probably feed them for a while.

Human resourcefulness is quite a profitable business. So is recycling. The only problem is that you need to find someone who will buy recycled items, and usually the people who would by them are resourceful individuals themselves who can usually find fro free what they would buy for cheap..

I just work up from a nap.