my family has been recycling metals before the word "recycling " was understood. i remember as a child watching my father set fire to a dozen or more cars at a time because the scrap yard payed more if you burned them first.i grew up in this atmosphere of making a living off the refuse of polite society.scrapping is in my blood. married at 22 and have some how remained married to the same woman for 26 years. she too cant stand the idea of throwing something away that can be reused.we never discard anything unless it is completely broken.we have two boys together, she had two boys when we met and i had a daughter for a total of five children. I've worked for all the individual scrap yards at one time or another in north Alabama.i have no formal training and dropped out of school when my girlfriend got pregnant with my daughter and got a job. after that failed relationship it was too late to finish school so i am basically self taught. i love to read and catch myself reading the dictionary when i run out of sci-fi. i did manage to pay in enough social security to draw disability because i did terrible things to myself years ago trying to refine, first gold from small mining adventures with my father and later E-scrap with my father and friends. i was blind and in the dark. i had no idea what i was doing or how to do it. i had text books to go by but not a bit of chemistry knowledge and only an eighth grade education to call upon. i totally ruined my lungs by making nitric acid and am SO happy to see the way safety is stressed on the forum.i cant say i never did the wrong thing, i very much did the wrong thing.partied too much and studied too little.any young people that may read this just let me say to you, you are not indestructible.things you do now will effect you down the line either physically or mentally.be safe,work safe,try to do the right thing. remember, if you have to decide whether something is right or wrong, more times than not it will be wrong.when something is right you know its right.
