Bringing bottles back to Connie's, (which for reasons I have never known we called Ben Drooms, or was it Bendrooms, was it named after a person or was it just a word or what?) was one of my fondest memories. The guys next door, the O'Days, were maybe five years older than us and they were into cars and spent a lot of time in their garage working on them and drinking lots and lots of pop, but the deposit on the bottles was chump change to them and they were glad to give them to us just to get rid of them. We formed a wagon train in the alley. two cent, and five cent bottles jostling to the bumps in the unpaved alley, down to 57th Street and then across Christiana and into Bendrooms. They were not all that happy to see us. "Did you buy all these here?" they would ask suspiciously, but they knew we would be spending it all back over the candy counter so they rang them all up.
Years later in southern Illinois we would buy a case of Cooks beer for $2.80 a case with 85 cents deposit, and when we drank it all we would take the empties back along with fifty cents and buy a quart of something called Vino Fino which put a nice nightcap on the evening.
It doesn't happen here anymore. I guess back when it made economic sense, bottles were expensive and it made it a more attractive buy if you could get two cents of your purchase back. Ecology was not a concern back in those days. Actually with cans it makes economic sense because the metal in the can is worth something,. In Austin there were a lot of bums who were constantly searching for empty cans and if you were a thoughtful citizen you would save your cans and when you saw a bum on the street scrounging you would offer him a bag of them.
A lot of the reason states do that deposit thing is not financial but ecological, just to keep the crap from littering the roads. It seems like the right thing to do and I am ashamed that my home true blue state doesn't do it while Beagles's dubious purple state does.
It's a minor thing I suppose but what sticks in my craw at the supermarket is those people who have been waiting in line ahead of you and only when the clerk is done ringing them up does it occur to them to look through their pockets or their purses or whatever to find out where their money or card is. Did they think they were going to get their food for free?
Speaking of the end is near there are those hellish fires in California, and those two hurricanes, one of which is making landfall as I write, AND. there is now a meteor with a .41 percent chance of hitting the earth on the day before election day. It is only 6 feet across so it won't be eliminating any species, but it could well knock you on the noggin,
I'm surprised to see Yang, a guy I rather admire on that poster of lunatics. I don't know who those military guys are but one look at 'Jocko' assures me that they will not be getting my vote.
I expected wild and wacky things from the rep convention, but it's kind of like those chair throwing shows, it gets old fast. After two nights of watching it between innings I am giving it up.
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