When I was a young lad of seven years, I had an uncanny knack for turning trash into treasure. I wasn’t your average kid; while others spent their days playing tag or riding bikes, I had a more entrepreneurial spirit.
My grand scheme involved collecting beer and soda bottles from neighbors to return them and pocket the deposit refunds. It all started innocently enough. One day, at the local grocery store I noticed one of my neighbors, Mrs. Bupp, unloading several empty soda bottles into a stack of empty plastic carriers in the front corner of the store by the cashier. Tina, the lady at the checkout counter asked “how many bottles was that? “Mrs. Bupp replied, “only fifteen this time dear”. Tina turned and hit some keys on the register causing the drawer to open. She then proceeded to hand Mrs. Bupp thirty cents in change.
Being curious, I approached Tina and asked about the exchange. Tina explained to me that Mrs. Bupp was returning her empty soda bottles to get back her deposit of two cents per bottle, quart sized soda bottles were five cents each.
A seed was planted. I had a plan brewing in my mind, and I began to implement it immediately. Armed with my Radio Flyer red wagon, I began going door to door, asking my neighbors if I could collect their empty bottles for recycling. I would return most of the soda bottles to “Three Sisters” a little sandwich shop in my neighborhood. It was closer than the grocery store, and they had a nickel pinball machine that I liked to play.
I don’t know why they called the shop “Three Sisters”. It was owned by two sisters and a brother named Maxx. I guess the name worked better than “Two Sisters and Maxx”. Maxx was a jolly little guy, always laughing and joking around with customers. Maxx took a liking to me. When I would show up at the store, propping the door open so I could make my many trips in and out, he would say loudly, “Here comes the bottle boy”.
As I said, Maxx took a liking to me. Their business was primarily making hoagie sandwiches, French fries, fountain sodas and ice-cream floats. Maxx would always save the ends of the ice cream containers for me. This was a little kid’s treasure. There would be maybe a scoop and a half of ice cream left over in each container. Maxx would sit me down at one of the two tables they had in the store and present me with an ice cream container and a teaspoon and proclaim,” Ice cream make everything better”. I was in heaven.
While I would be enjoying my treat, Maxx would talk to me about school and how I was getting along with the other kids in the neighborhood. He would always ask, “hey bottle-boy, are you behaving yourself?”, to which I would always shake my head in the affirmative as I was enjoying the days ice cream treat. Sometimes we would talk about the problems I had with some of the other kids, and Maxx would always tap the round container and say, “Ice cream makes everything better!” It was like a mantra of his.
Maxx helped me to get more creative in my money-making efforts. “You know bottle-boy, you need to ask people for their beer bottles too”. “You take beer bottles too?”, I asked. “No, no,” Maxx replied. “You take the beer bottles back to the bar. They pay you a nickel for each bottle”. With that information in hand, I quickly doubled my take from the neighborhood. It appeared that certain neighbors had more beer bottles than soda bottles. A few had no soda bottles at all,
Miss Kitty never had any soda bottles, but I could always count on filling my radio Flyer red wagon to overflowing with beer bottles when I would visit her house. She would ask me to bring my wagon through the little alleyway between the houses into her back yard. I would then have to go into the kitchen and fetch the beer bottles from the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink. Often, they were in boxes that made it easy to just haul them out and stack them in my wagon. I could always count on at least a dollar worth of beer bottles from Miss Kitty and her brother.
Now Miss Kitty and her brother lived high up the hill on South Tenth Street, and it was always a chore getting a wagon loaded with boxes of beer bottles down the hill to Boo Boo’s Tavern without toppling the wagon. I quickly learned to hold the handle and lower the wagon backwards slowly down the hill.
On one such visit to Miss Kitty’s home she asked me if I knew how to mow lawns. This led to me offering another service to my bottle suppliers and netted me additional income. As the seasons changed, I was insightful enough to offer snow clearing from sidewalks and driveways. And to top the efforts of other industrious kids in the neighborhood I would always finish the job with a sprinkling of rock salt to help keep the ice from reforming. I suddenly had a small and thriving competitive enterprise.
Soon, my wagon was overflowing with bottles, and my lawn mowing and snow shoveling services were in high demand each season. I became known as the “Bottle Boy” of South Tenth Street, admired for my work ethic and clever recycling tactics.
But my entrepreneurial journey was not without its hilarious mishaps. One winter morning, while briskly shoveling Miss Kitty’s sidewalk, I encountered a stubborn patch of ice. Determined to conquer it, I took a running start, only to slip and slide down the entire length of the sidewalk, landing in a pile of snow six doors away with a thud. Miss Kitty couldn’t help but chuckle as she watched me struggle to finally overcome the ice patch.
With the ice finally removed and a fresh sprinkling of rock salt in place, Miss Kitty asked me inside and offered me a cup of hot cocoa and some homemade chocolate chip cookies.
During the summer months, my lawn mowing adventures weren’t any less eventful. I once accidentally mowed Charlie Bupp’s prized rose bush thinking it was just a tall thick weed. Another time, I managed to startle old Mr. Thompson’s cat, sending it scurrying up a tree which I then had to scramble up to rescue the darned cat. That cat was vicious too. By the time I got back on the ground my arms were all scratched up.
After each of these mishaps I would always wind up ending my day at the sandwich shop playing pinball and eating ice cream with Maxx. Ice cream makes everything better, that’s what Maxx would always say
With each bottle I collected and each lawn I mowed; I earned a little more pocket money. By the end of each week, I had saved up enough money to spend the entire Saturday afternoon at Three Sisters sandwich shop playing that nickel pinball machine.
I loved that game. Watching the silver ball shoot up into the play area and bounce off the bumpers. The sound of the bells and buzzers as the points kept going higher on the back glass. The challenge of keeping the ball in play with only two small flippers was a thrill. It took me a while to learn the finer points of tapping the machine on its corners as the ball would hit against the bumpers, sending it flying in various directions and keeping it in play. All this effort would be rewarded with the loud “POP” indicating that I had scored enough points to get a replay.
Then came the Saturday afternoon that changed everything. I arrived at Three Sisters sandwich shop with my wagon loaded to the top with empty soda bottles only to find that the store was closed. They were never closed on Saturdays. There was a note taped to the inside of the door glass that read, “Closed Until Further Notice”. The store never opened again.
I had to start traveling the extra four blocks to Jimmy’s Market to cash in my empty bottles. At the sandwich shop I would just place the bottles into empty racks that were sitting in the corner, at Jimmy’s I had to get the cashier to verify the number of bottles and then I was required to separate the bottles by brand and place them in the appropriate racks. Only after I had completed sorting the bottles would the cashier then give me the deposit refund. Then there was nothing left but to leave the store. There was no pinball machine, no ice cream, and no Maxx.
I did not know it then, but Maxx had a big impact on my life. He was a true friend who expected nothing from me. He always seemed genuinely interested in what was going on in my life. Maxx taught me that there was always something positive that I should be thankful for, nothing is ever as bad as it seems, and Ice Cream makes Everything Better.
