There is a scrap metal buyer who has opened up shop recently about a ten minute walk from our house. When I take the dogs past it the parking lot is usually full of crappy old cars overloaded with ancient appliances and tangles of scrap and wire. The prospective sellers tend to overflow onto the sidewalk, so I ease the dogs, on short leashes, past these folk yanking jagged sheets of metal siding from the backseats of their station wagons or a household’s worth of ducting from the bed of their pickup trucks.
A concommitant sight now is that of a tweaker pedaling his stolen mountain bike, holding onto the handlebars with one hand, towing with the other a shopping cart full of hubcaps, fenceposts, and other scrap to peddle. I know where they’re going but where did it all come from? Recycling is noble and a car denuded of hub caps is not thus rendered inutile but somewhere a balance has been upset. If property is theft, what is theft itself?
Recent Comments