Stosh also liked to go to the horse races at the Hazel Park Raceway. Stosh won money often enough, but his wife gave him permission to go only with money from his small enterprise. Wilbo remembers a great day when Stosh took the whole family to the races, and Stosh actually hit a perfecta. He selected the two horses who had finished first and second, in the correct order. Wilbo always wanted to go with Stosh to the races again, but this day out never happened again.
When the suburbs further north than his bungalow were being built, he knew to visit new construction sites. The construction crews left scraps of aluminum from siding split-levels and piles of pine stubs from two by fours. What Stosh picked up and carted away in his station wagon didn't need to be carted away to a landfill by a band of laborers. The builders didn't seem to mind, and Stosh filled his station wagon and drove it to scrap metal yards on Eight Mile Road. In a few years, Stosh stopped picking up the scrap aluminum. Some of the supervisors started picking it up and selling it.
Wilbo loved to go junking with his step-grandfather, and Wilbo didn't know Stosh was his step-grandfather until his mother explained the difference one day. At the scrap yards, Wilbo helped unload the station wagon into skiffs. Stosh made him wear gloves and handle only the small bits and not touch any of the piles of copper wire and stuff stashed around the yard. One time, Stosh wheeled the skiff onto the scale. Wilbo set his foot upon the scale's wooden floorboards. "Take your foot off the scale!" ordered the scrap-buyer. It was easy to tell that a foot was placed upon the scale. A foot couldn't apply steady pressure and it caused fluctuations for the needle's scale. Wilbo only wanted to help his grandfather out, and Stosh didn't get too angry at him for putting his foot on the scale. He pulled Wilbo backwards by the shoulders.
Many times Wilbo and Stosh would drive along Eight Mile Road and Stanley would pull up behind the concrete block buildings of stores and factories. Wilbo stayed in the car and his grandfather would climb up the ladder of the trash bins, steel sided rectangles taller than a man. Stosh called these gondolas. If Stosh spotted some good, discarded swag, he would climb into the bin and throw it out. Wilbo just watched as stuff landed on the ground outside the gondola, coils of wire, pants and even books with covers torn off. Wilbo did a little dumpster diving while in college, but he had to stop because he couldn't keep his finds in a dorm room. His room mates complained.
Stosh also brought out coils of copper cable he had scavenged from who knows where. He kept them in cardboard boxes in his station wagon's covered compartment. It was the covered compartment where a spare tire could be stored. Wilbo and Stosh carried these into his parents' backyard and Stosh lit small, hot ground fires and tossed the coils into the flames. Wilbo liked how the copper cables turned the flames colors, blue and green and deep red, the colors of firework explosions. When the fire dwindled, Stosh and Wilbo beat the charred insulation off the wire with dead sticks. Neither Stosh or Wilbo knew a thing about asbestos or polychlorinated biphenyls. If Stosh hadn't been able to burn his copper cable clean, he would have had to skin the wire clean with a jack-knife. When the wire was cool and clean, Stosh loaded them back into his cardboard boxes, load the station wagon, and Wilbo and he drove up the road to a corner store to buy some penny candy.
When Wilbo's mother started a rabbit warren and a chicken coop, Stosh helped out with feeding costs. He'd arrive on the farm with a load of cabbage, tomatoes, lettuce, potatos and carrots. Stosh also put aside a few grapefruit and oranges, which he peeled and ate after carefully washing the skins. Once, Stosh brought him along, and his grandfather parked his car behind a small fruit market where he knew the manager. Wilbo and he opened waxed boxes and pulled out the heads of lettuce, and Stosh sliced out the bad spots with his jack-knife. The rabbit warren didn't last very long. The mother rabbits gave birth to little pink offspring, but spooked by noises and disturbances, the rabbits devoured their little ones. The chickens loved the scraps Stosh and Wilbo threw into their yard, pecking the vegetables with delight.
Stosh and Wilbo's grandmother always drove out to the farm on Sunday mornings, and Stosh and Wilbo would spend a few minutes rounding up three or four or more chickens from the yard. The roosters defended the flock, and several attacked Wilbo's butt by jumping up and plunging spurs into his cheeks.
The nastiest one Wilbo had nicknamed Douglas, and one Sunday, Wilbo caught him and carried him to his grandfather upside down, clutching his yellow legs between his hands. Wilbo held Douglas's struggling body far away from his because Douglas was trying to swing up and peck Wilbo's wrists.
Wilbo was always sent to the front yard before Stosh set up the stump and found his axe. Wilbo heard that the chickens ran around for a few seconds after a blow of Stosh's axe decapitated them. He didn't remember if anyone saved the blood for thickening a chicken soup. He wasn't allowed to see it being collected.
By Three O'Clock in the afternoon, the family would sit down around the table and enjoy their roasted chickens, fattened by produce, chicken yard pecking and a thrifty amount of chicken feed. The chicken soup came later in the week when Grandmom and Stosh stayed over. Grandmom added noodles she rolled out and sliced on the kitchen table, thick carrot slices and Wilbo peppered his bowls just right before he dug in with his spoon.
Wilbo Could Be Rich on What He Has Thrown Away
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