When my family moved from the city to the rural suburbs in the early 1950s, I began "treasure hunting" in the garbage dumps, swamps and woods near our home -- the scavenging was great! Old bottles, license plates, dish-ware, iron and rubber toys, machine parts, tools, soda pop bottles -- and, of course, lots of old books and magazines, which is mostly what I sell today.
And one of my earliest "dirty scrounges" involved the red "sicle" balls on Popsicle wrappers. Back in the 1950s, Popsicle offered free prizes to those who had accumulated vast quantities of the red "sicle" balls from the Popsicle wrappers (with, of course, the requisite 10 cents for postage, naturally). The idea was to spend all your allowance, purchasing HUGE quantities of Popsicles, in order to cut off the red "sicle" balls from each CLEAN wrapper. Ah -- but nowhere in the rules was there any mention of the word "clean".
So, on my twice daily walk to the post office to pick up the mail (and does anybody else remember when the post office made deliveries TWICE a day?!?), my eyes would be glued to the dirt path along the road, scoping out discarded Popsicle wrappers (as well as Fudgsicle, Creamsicle and Dreamsicle -- anybody remember those, as well?), scooping up each dirty, sticky, syrupy wrapper in sight, and jamming them into my jeans pockets. Returning home, I'd cut out the red "sicle" balls, clean them as well as I could, and set them aside until I'd reached the necessary amount, when off they'd go in the mail, sometimes in a somewhat thick and sweet-smelling envelope, no doubt attracting swarms of bees and ants on its way to New York City and Popsicle headquarters.
I acquired several free books that way, plus a collection of stamps and coins. And the only drawback was the lectures I kept receiving from my mother, regarding the incredibly horrible conditions of my pants pockets!
But scrounging was in my blood at a very early age -- and still remains, at 75.
May the hunt never cease!
