FoxCraft

Picking Up a Little Extra Cash

Taking regular walks is a habit that pays off in many ways: increased fitness, weight control, better health, serenity—and sometimes even cold, hard cash.

A friend of mine who is a habitual walker keeps one eye on the ground in search of stray coins. He maintains that walking early or late in the day is best for this, as the slanting sunlight reflects off the coins and makes them easier to spot. (Of course, the light also reflects off of little spots of tar, drops of oil, broken bits of plastic, and discarded wads of chewing gum, so it’s a good idea to look before you grab.)

Two or three found pennies makes a successful walk, a nickel is great, a dime is better, and the occasional quarter is a bonanza. In this way, he accumulates enough for a cup of coffee, oh, maybe every three or four months.

It’s too bad he wasn’t along when my two granddaughters and I went for a walk in an unfamiliar neighborhood a couple of days before Halloween. For an entire block, the sidewalk was decorated with scattered coins, probably three or four dollars’ worth altogether. There they were, shining in the morning sun—which also highlighted the generous globs of glue or silicone with which they were securely attached to the concrete. We couldn’t figure out whether this was supposed to be a Halloween trick or somebody’s idea of performance art, but we chose not to expend the effort and fingernail damage to pry loose any of the frozen assets.

Out walking one morning this week, I was marching along at my usual pace, thinking my usual great thoughts, when I glanced down at the gutter and spotted a ten-dollar bill. As I picked it up, my mind flashed back some 20 years, to a time when extra ten-dollar bills were a scarce commodity. We were out hiking one day, and since I had a cold, the pockets of my jeans were filling up with used tissues and cough-drop wrappers. When we passed a garbage can, I took the opportunity to empty my pockets of trash—and also, accidentally, of cash.

The ten dollars in my pocket that I inadvertently threw away was a substantial part of the weekly budget. It took me a long time to forgive myself for that bit of carelessness.

The other morning, picking up someone else’s lost ten-dollar bill, I couldn’t help but wonder whether the person who lost it needed it as much as we had needed that long-ago ten dollars. I certainly didn’t need it now, and taking it didn’t quite feel right. I briefly considered leaving it where it had fallen in case its owner came looking for it. But the chances of that happening were slim, since the bill was damp and had obviously been lying in the gutter at least since the day before. The next person who happened along wouldn’t necessarily need it, either. And leaving it there to blow away or wash down the storm drain wouldn’t do any good for anybody.

So I stuck it in my pocket. Later that day, I stuffed it into a red kettle under the appreciative eyes of a Salvation Army bell ringer.

What goes around, comes around. Sometimes it just takes a couple of decades.

Going Cold Turkey

It all started with the turkeys. No, not the “wild” turkeys that hang out in our neighborhood to raise their families and provide meals for mountain lions. These are city turkeys: cheap, tempting birds with plump thighs and improbably rounded bosoms. They are the November loss-leader turkeys at Safeway: only $4.99 (under 16 pounds) or $6.99 (over 16 pounds) with a $25 purchase.

Turkey just happens to be one of my favorite foods. It’s not in the category of chocolate chip cookies, brownies, or fresh bread, of course, but it’s right up there in the second tier with baby carrots and leftover meatloaf. So this time of year, when turkeys are such a bargain, I’d like to stock up on three or four of them.

Unfortunately, what with the tomatoes from last year’s garden, the hamburger that was on sale last week, a couple of loaves of homemade bread, some bags of frozen vegetables, a handful of breakfast burritos, an oversized gel ice pack, several containers of vaguely recognizable leftovers, and three over-ripe bananas, there wasn’t room in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator for even one small turkey.

What the heck. I’ve been wanting to get a freezer for a while now, anyway. It was time for a trip to Sears. They had a cute little five-cubic-foot upright freezer, just what I wanted. On sale, with tax, it came to $228.95.

There was one in stock. We bought it. We hauled it home. We lugged it up the steps and into the house. We freed it from its carton. Funny, it seemed a lot bigger in our kitchen than it had there in the store, where it had looked so slender surrounded by its 17-cubic-foot cousins.

Nevertheless, it fit nicely into the spot in the kitchen where I had planned to put it. What I hadn’t stopped to consider was where to plug it in. The refrigerator, the electric teakettle, the microwave, and the telephone were all plugged into the two available outlets on that same wall. The question was whether the 35-year-old wiring would be able to handle a freezer as well.

You never know until you try. So I moved the phone into the next room, rearranged the kitchen, crossed my fingers and held my breath, and plugged the freezer in. Then, while it was cooling itself down, I simultaneously heated water in the microwave and the electric kettle. Everything worked. No circuit breakers tripped. So far, so good.

It was time to go buy turkeys. When I came back from the store, I did the math. Three 18-pound turkeys at $7.00 each, that’s 54 pounds and $21.00. Adding that to the $229 for the freezer makes $250. Okay, $250 divided by 54 pounds equals $4.63 per pound. What a bargain.

While I’m stocking up on cheap meat, maybe I should consider bigger game than turkeys. Deer, maybe. Or elk. Or what about a trip to Canada to shoot a moose?

Of course, then I’d have to buy a bigger freezer. I’m not sure I can afford to save that much.

Flying To the Airport

It takes 22 minutes to drive from our house to the airport. Given the right incentive, however, you can make it in 12.

This fact was established through first-hand experience and observation between 5:17 a.m. and 5:29 a.m. on a recent Monday morning.

With all the security regulations currently in place (“Sorry, ma’am, but that bottle of contact lens solution is over three ounces. You’ll have to put it in your checked bag.”), even our small airport requires passengers to arrive at least an hour ahead of scheduled flights. A 6:00 a.m. departure, then, means getting to the airport by 5:00 a.m., which means setting the alarm for 4:15 a.m. in order to leave the house by 4:30 or 4:35 a.m.

But when I opened my eyes that Monday morning—without having heard an alarm—the sky seemed lighter than it should have been. I turned over and squinted at the inch-high red letters on the digital clock. Even without my classes, I could read them if I leaned over far enough. It was 5:12.

Expletives were said. (Only a couple; there was no time to waste on them.) Clothes were thrown on. Shaving and toothbrushing were skipped. By the time we started backing out of the garage, the clock in the car said 5:17.

Fortunately, no early walkers were out on our neighborhood’s curved, hilly, no-sidewalk streets. Fortunately, the paper carrier saw us coming in plenty of time to swing her car back into her own lane. Fortunately, there’s little traffic on the new bypass road before 5:30 on a Monday morning. Fortunately, the five miles of road construction on the airport road was free of both traffic and construction workers.

As for red lights, all I’m going to say is that we were lucky. Of course, sometimes it’s necessary to make your own luck.

Eventually, we careened around the last curve and screeched to a halt in front of the terminal. My spouse leaped out, grabbed his suitcase and his computer out of the back, and dashed toward the nearest door. I drove around the loop and parked in the hourly parking lot, then followed him inside, fully expecting to hear that he had missed the flight and we’d be heading home.

As the revolving door spit me out into the terminal, I heard my name from on high. No, it wasn’t a direct message from the Almighty (Had said Almighty been inclined to deliver any personal messages that morning, a wakeup call at 4:20 would have been helpful.) It was my spouse at the top of the escalator, already checked in and ready to go through security. No wonder it only took a few minutes; there was no line, since all the other passengers had finished checking in half an hour ago.

The time was 5:37 a.m.

The departures screen showed the flight leaving on time, at 6:08. That goodness for that extra eight minutes.

After waiting until it was clear that the traveler would get through security in time to actually board the plane, I headed home. I observed all the speed limits and waited obediently at all the red lights. It took me 22 minutes. I didn’t need any tea for breakfast; the adrenaline rush was more than sufficient to get me through the morning.

One morning this week, a 6:20 a.m. flight gave us a chance to try again. This time, we set two alarms, for 4:45 and 4:47. This time, we made sure they were set for a.m. instead of p.m. The first one went off as scheduled, and we got up calmly, without a single expletive and with plenty of time for brushing teeth and putting clothes on right-side out.

We left the house at 5:17. We drove to the airport, not even having our blood pressure raised by the semi ahead of us that relentlessly maintained the speed limit all the way through the deserted construction zone. We pulled up in front of the terminal at 5:39.

I dropped the passenger off, kissed him goodbye, and drove home in a relaxed and deliberate manner. No panic; no drama; no adrenaline rush.

It took me three cups of tea to get energized for the day.