POP BOTTLES

                If you're a kid, one of the things you've got in common with Grone Folx is a continual quest for funds. Generally, even in a good economy, jobs aren't really there for kids, except for running errands and mowing lawns,

that sorta thing; even those were iffy.

     Asking your parents for more money? Okay, if you don't mind going through a long, drawn-out process to get it.

     There WAS another way, back then, and it often literally lay there for the taking....pop bottles.

     If you needed, say, two dollars for the show and munchies, no sweat. The little bottles, like small Coke, were each worth a nickel. 16-ounce bottles, a dime. Quart bottles were twenty cents, and those half-gallon Lawson's milk bottles, a quarter.

     People threw bottles away, or sometimes let them pile up on their back porches, intending perhaps to return them. With a wee bit o' persuasion, you could often get them to gift you with ther whole lot. A wagon came in handy for such tasks, or a stray shopping cart.

      Once you'd loaded your cargo, it's off to the store....supermarkets were best, although the corner store would do in a pinch, if you could convince the owner that yes, you DID buy all that pop from him.
Eventually, you'd get shed of your load, and walk down the street, pocket bulging with coins.

      Some places, I've heard, still take pop bottles; I wish we were one of them.