The flagging economy has reallyhit home. The theory goes something like this: Since everything in China is booming, like America once did, the Chinese are building stuff, stuff that requires lots of steel....and not too surprisingly, they've developed one more bodacious appetite for it. Scrap metal is the new economic engine, the redneck's dot.com bubble, with scrap metal "firms" springing up quicker than dog-fennells on a ghost track.

Can you say... "out of control?" When man-hole covers, and storm-drain grates are being ripped right out of the highway system, and catalytic converters being sawed-off ofnew cars as they are gracing the dealer's lot,........ you gotta a problem. You'd think the scrap metal buyer would be suspicious of man-hole covers and storm drains.......Well, you would think that. But, don't go get all hot and bothered, the government is now imposing "regulations" on this "industry". They're gonna "check" stuff that people bring in to sell as scrap. Right.......... "just 'throw' that man-hole cover in that ol' deep-freezer.....Billy-Bob.... you know they ain't gonna look inside that freezer, they jus' gonna weigh it all.........." And, that'sexactly correct. That's what's happening, right now.

But, Billy-Bob has done gone..... and gone too far! STEALING the hood and two front fenders from my daddy's '56 Chevy race car, right out of my back yard........the only remaining physical artifact from my dad's racing days.......no he wasn't ever a famous racer, but still, there a'int no sense in that. And what's more, they wuz all so rusty, you could practically read a newspaper through them. Lying under the north star for the last 40-something years tends to make rust happen. Shoot-fire, they had virtually no weight and no significant value.....except to me, and in that regard, they were priceless, not too mention irreplaceable.

See, my dad did not have a sentimental bone, he never cared for nothing that wasn't being used, and that's OK, I reckon, but that don't describe me. Heck, I would not be on this site if I wasn't a sentimental-loving-ghost-track-chasing old coot. It was only through a series of seemingly, almost divine, events evolving over decades that I came into ownership of these priceless heirlooms anyway. But, I had them, and I even took the remains of that '56 chevy's hood to the first Columbia reunion in 2009. I'm really glad, now, that I done that.

Really, I'm just another victim of the idiotic housing-bubble-collapse. A created sure-fire-failure that affected countless innocent bystanders, but (surprise) made a gazillion-aire or twelve, In my particular case, Mr. Big-Wigg developer built a GATED"golf-course-subdivision" around my house, (I'm conveniently an "out-parcel") and parts of this nirvana are now stagnant and considered a "zombie development". They may as well put up a billboard and advertised "man hole covers and storm drain grates AHEAD".....it's feeding time at the zoo....... Billy-Bob came in and picked her clean.........but when he got my old hood as a bonus..........I'm mad, but (really) I'm really sad. There a'int one thing I can do about it. The old girl's gone this time.I knew I should-a put her in the living room.