Living alongside of scroungers throughout history

You really don't hear the word "scrounge" much nowadays, and I'm only familiar with it because of old books that I read, and one of the characters in a movie that I saw as a kid, who was called "the scrounger". Hang on, I'll go Google a definition for scrounge. Here ya go:

"to search about and turn up something needed from whatever source is available."

That sounds about right to me. And like everything else that people do, and have always done, it varies by individual. It can be a thrifty person like me who wanders around in his garage, looking for something to use for something I'm working on, all of the way to a person who considers anything that isn't nailed down, or guarded, or locked up well enough, to be worthy of taking. I've had a couple of bicycles scrounged from me in the course of a long life, and apparently they were taken from me because I was careless enough to not use a strong enough lock. It's all a question of point of view.

Most scroungers are like racoons, they're just opportunistic. They're always looking around, and if they see something that they like that fills one of their needs they take it. If they get caught, they might just try to look pathetic, or say that they thought whatever they were taking wasn't wanted anymore. They were just scrounging!

When I lived on the poor side of town in Los Angeles I became very aware of how much scrounging goes on. I was familiar with collecting aluminum cans, but I didn't know how valuable copper was, and that it was scrounged by some people as much as possible. Lately I've heard how valuable the stuff inside of catalytic converters is, and the scroungers just see this stuff sitting outside on the side of the road (well, attached to cars, but to them that's just a small detail!).

People will always scrounge, and it isn't just for financial reasons, some people just enjoy it. Whenever my dad went out to play golf he would bring along a pole that would allow him to scrounge golf balls out of water hazards. He didn't need the money, but he got enjoyment out of doing it. And I understand. But my dad drew the line at golf balls in water hazards that he knew had been left behind - he wasn't about to scrounge a nice set of clubs sitting out by the clubhouse!

When I moved back to Phoenix from Los Angeles I was absolutely astonished how little scrounging goes on. Most of the yards had no fence in the front (and still don't nowadays), you could just walk right up to them and take whatever you wanted. To this day I chuckle a bit at people who get out of their car, engine running, door open, to check their mail. I've often walked past these people and said to myself "I could be in the next county with their car by the time they turned around!" But I didn't need to scrounge a car, and still don't.

But don't get wrong, I like scrounging as much as anyone. I'm working on a gardening project in the backyard and could use a small piece of wood, or metal, that I can probably find in my garage, or along the side of the house. It would be silly to go to the store and pay for something that I could just scrounge, right?

Thank you for the encouragement! If you want to see daily pics of my adventures on my recumbent trike in suburban Phoenix (just for fun, of course!) you can follow me on buymeacoffee.com/bradhall, and you can buy me a coffee if you'd like to!