All-Time High Prices

Prices are at an all-time high....not for housing, anyway but aluminum cans. Just read this interesting article in the LA Times about the rising value of recycled materials. On Jan. 1, the California redemption value for a 12-ounce bottle or can went up from 4 cents to 5 cents with the average price for a pound for aluminum at $1.55, an all-time high. Whether the amount paid for cans is a pittance or an income stream depends on your perspective.

When I was 10 or 11, it certainly was a great way to get pocket change for snacks. Money was tight and us kids didn’t get allowances. I remember scavenging the flea market garbage cans on the weekends while my parents worked their stall. My dad even made a special pole with the hook at the end so I could really dig in. It’s not exactly a fond memory. The days were really hot, the garbage smelly and the cans sticky and hard to flatten beneath our child sized sneakers. I would have been embarrassed to be seen by any of my classmates or friends. One indelible image that pops up is that of me and my sister, aged ten and five, both with poles and garbage bags in hand standing next to my mother, who had taken a break to find us and was holding my baby sister, a toddler on her hip. A white man with a soda saw us and deliberately made a beeline for us, sidestepping several garbage bins, and placed the can directly in my bag. I wonder if what he saw was a brown family on the edge of poverty. Looking back, I wonder about my parents’ decision to let their ten and five year-old daughters roam around scavenging cans on their own but longer feel shame or embarrassment. It is these long-forgotten memories involving my earliest experiences in how hard it is to earn money that influence how I view money today. My youngest sister who luckily grew up as our family prospered, I feel, has a much more careless attitude toward money. ($100 for a two piece swim suit!!!) She’s has decidedly middle-class tastes while my low-income inner-self consciousness has become more prominent since the home-buying obsession started. I used to roll my eyes when my mother marched into the grocery store to demand a 30 cent price difference after discovering an error on the receipt. Now, I’m right there along with her demanding the same thing.