Driving Around With Stolen Aluminum Siding In My Van

Photo By John Hoff

Yesterday, HNC Housing Director Jeff Skrenes had car trouble and needed a ride. I was turning off Lyndale Ave. N. when I spotted...

...a mess of aluminum siding in my traffic lane. I couldn't avoid running over some of it. I turned the corner and pulled over.

"What's the matter?" Jeff asked. He had his nose in a newspaper, scrutinizing boring data about foreclosure trends while--and here is the rich irony--we drove through the dystopian heart of Foreclosure-istan, surrounded by its rich layers of phenomenon.

"Didn't you see that aluminum siding in the road?" I asked, popping my van's hatch. I fetched all that siding out of the cold, snowy street--initially dragging it to the sidewalk and then loading it into my vehicle. It obviously fell off the truck of a scrapper, and I highly doubt its origins were honest. But what am I supposed to do? It's not exactly worth dusting for fingerprints. It's not worth calling 911. Heck, it's not even worth calling 311.

So I'm in the ironic position of hauling around and disposing of stolen aluminum in order to be a good and environmentally-conscious citizen and clear the roadways of a hazard.

When I travel to my rural Minnesota ancestral homeland, I'll probably take the scrap along and give it to some scrupulously honest scrapper known to me personally.