Have you ever been down to a scrap metal yard? It’s quite the experience.
Sometime this summer we began filling the back of our station-wagon with metal junk we have around. Broken bed-frames, kitchen-ware we can’t kosherize, all kinds of stuff. We figured we’d take it down to a scrap metal yard (there are several down in the industrial areas of Albany and Cohoes) so it can be recycled and we can earn a few dollars, too. After a couple of weeks, the back of the wagon was filled, and we needed to use it for other things so we punched the address into Google Maps and away we went.
We pulled up to a cavernous building, kind of like an enormous shed and pulled into the wide open entryway. We stopped inside and got out to ask the men working as to the procedures, since this was our first time. The guy peered into the back of our car and sized up the materials in an instant. He told us to keep the kitchenware aluminum to be weighed up front but to drop off all the tin at the tin pile out back.
I don’t know much about tin but was kind of disappointed. It seemed that we’d be able to get rid of our tin, but he wasn’t interested in weighing it to give us anything for it. Oh well. But I had to get rid of it anyways, so we drove out of that cavernous building into the scrap metal yard behind.
Tin pile? Where is the tin pile? There were piles everywhere, with massive rumbling machines with claws and magnets and moving arms working noisily amongst them. We saw huge stacks of metal soda cans crushed beyond recognition into squares somewhat like bales of hay. We saw car parts stacked higher than two family homes, we saw large trucks lurching and bouncing in what passed for dirt roadways between the piles. One crane operator noticed that we were lost, and pointed to the tin pile further back. We pulled in there, unloaded the whole back aside for the kitchenware, and drove out of the yard back into the building.
As we pulled in, the guy yelled for us to stop. We did, and he wrote something down on a small pad. We were on a giant scale! Turns out that we did get paid for all that tin, and it was indeed weighed after all. Instead of weighing the tin, he weighed the car. He weighed our car going in and coming out of the yard, and the difference is what we got paid for.
Wait a second! This is quite interesting. Often in life we think the value is in what we accumulate, be they possessions or knowledge, experiences or associations, this or that. In terms of college, you might think it can be valued or measured in terms of the classes you take, grades you get, internships, social experiences, how many friends, how many parties… but our scrap metal experience taught us differently. They don’t weigh your tin. They weigh you! The value here is measured by how much you’ve changed! What this experience did to you? How are we different because of it? Are we the same going in and going out? How different are we? We are measured by that difference!
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We learned a couple of other life lessons that day at the scrap metal yard, aside from the “weighing difference” message above:
1) It looks like a huge mess out there, but that’s deceiving. It’s actually a very precise and calculated operation. It’s incredible watching that giant claw deftly maneuver its way around, quickly but accurately. The magnets pick up what they need to get. Everything is sorted. The type of material and reuse, all matters. Sometimes there can be incredible precision and focused interest behind what appears quite clumsy and indifferent.
2) It took the man a couple of seconds to size up everything crammed into our trunk. Later a different worker with nary a glance quickly separated our aluminum and stainless kitchenware. Years of hands-on experience is an incredible teacher. You don’t need to study chemistry or have advanced degrees, after years of handling this stuff, you know your metals when you see them. We learned a similar message when the excavator operator took one look at the first shovelful of dirt and told us that expert soil testers were off. And he was right!
3) Some things are worth saving. When the worker separated our stainless steel pot, he told us: Don’t recycle this. It’s a good pot in decent condition. We took a second look at it, and realized he was right. It needed Kosherizing, but that pot was eligible and so we took it home. Take a second look at some things in your life that you might have considered hopeless or useless. Maybe it has more value than you think. Do something with it.
4) Watching heavy file cabinets being crushed and crumpled like paper is a humbling experience. All physical strength has its match. Things we think of as heavyweight and durable have their limits, too.