[QUOTE=MissTake]
My folks (well, Mom only now) owns 40 acres in northern Minnesota for hunting purposes and Xmas tree gathering purposes. When they bought the land there was a rusted out trailer home circa 1960 off the end of the road, pretty much covered by trees and branches.
Two years ago the guys went up there for their usual week of Oreo cookie and beer no dead deer fun only to discover the trailer had been completely ransacked. The shed my dad built was also broken into.
Every piece of aluminum and cooper “they”, whoever “they” were, was gone. The trailer windows were broken on the ground, frames gone. Door torn out. Dad had some copper tubing in the shed - gone. Aluminum lawn chairs - gone.
The two main issues about the robbery -
The trailer was 200 yards from the road, completely nonvisible, and the entrance to the property gated and locked. The lock was not tampered with and gate just fine. So whoever took everything either came from the other side of the 40 on snowmobile/ATV and then drove everything back out through the crick, deadwood, steep hills - or - they hauled everything down to the road over a very closed, potholed road
AND
The trailer was infested with anything it could be infested with having sat there pretty empty for over 20 years. We knew there were hornet nests, raccoons, mice, rabbits, and we had found bear tracks around the trailer on numerous occassions. The floor was rotted through in places, the ceiling falling down with moldy insulation, and the stench was horrific.
My dad was pretty sure he knew who did it (the same jerk who killed the albino deer with a semi automatic sigh), but could never prove it.
[/QUOTE]
Copper and aluminum are very valuable nowadays. Telephone companies and roofing companies are finding out that thieves are stealing copper wire and aluminum products and selling them as scrap. Just a few days ago, there was an article in the Washington Post newspaper about a man who was electrocuted while trying to steal copper wiring from a transformer in an abandoned building. If you have anything made of these metals that you want to keep, make sure you secure them properly.
[QUOTE=medstar]
Copper and aluminum are very valuable nowadays. Telephone companies and roofing companies are finding out that thieves are stealing copper wire and aluminum products and selling them as scrap. Just a few days ago, there was an article in the Washington Post newspaper about a man who was electrocuted while trying to steal copper wiring from a transformer in an abandoned building. If you have anything made of these metals that you want to keep, make sure you secure them properly.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, yeah, that’s what we figured the invisible “they” took everything for. We’ve had more than a few homes burn down in the Twin Cities area due to the removal of copper pipes.
My BiL is allowed the scrap wire from his electricians job. It’s worth over $4/lb if the insulation is stripped off. That’s what he does while watching TV at night.
However, how does one secure properly the windows in a disgustingly broken down trailer? Or a shed that had three padlocks and massive hinges (they banged a hole into the side of the shed).
[QUOTE=medstar]
Copper and aluminum are very valuable nowadays. Telephone companies and roofing companies are finding out that thieves are stealing copper wire and aluminum products and selling them as scrap. . .
[/QUOTE]
Cities have been hit, too. Stockton has had thefts of the wire servicing streetlights, which causes costly repairs. The police ran some stings to raise the consciousness of the local recyclers. Haven’t heard if that’s stopped it.
I remember a news article a few years back where some sold the nose assembly (a spare) for the shuttle as scrap. Just drove off with the trailer it was on.
[QUOTE=medstar]
If you have anything made of these metals that you want to keep, make sure you secure them properly.
[/QUOTE]
How secure is that? Out here they steal bridges, or parts thereof. More than one hundred feet of aluminum railings on a bridge gone. Bolts holding the trusses gone. But since they clamped down on OTC drugs used to make meth, scrap metal theft has gone down.
Maybe that’s what happened to our aluminum screen door. We’re in the (mostly) final stages of fixing up our yard, so we have made a scrap heap in the backyard for all the leftover sod, branches, lino, whatever crap we want to get rid of. We took off our crappy screen door and threw it on this junk heap, too, to await hauling to the dump. A couple of days later, the screen door was gone. No problem; I just wish they’d take the rest of the pile.
I spoke to my sister this evening (for those who know any of our back-story it’s an odd thing: we’ve been officially not-speaking for some while but I sent her a condolence letter when I heard one of her dogs died and she called to thank me for it and evidently now we’re speaking again until the funeral games are finished) and mentioned the logs. Her words: “[Our brother] said he told some guy he could have 'em several months ago, didn’t he?”
I. am. so. pissed. off.
My brother, to my knowledge, isn’t now and has never been a liar and he sure as hell doesn’t need the money the logs would bring, but he also has a tendency to speak for others. Caught off-guard he may have told a story to his benefit to avoid a confrontation since he wasn’t alone when I spoke to him. Still, I’m almost positive he would not have told the doctor that he owned the property, but he may have said something to the effect of “You can have 'em for my part” or “I don’t think my brother’d care” (though if it were with his own property rest assured he’d look to the jots and tittles). Brilliant guy my brother, but can be oblivious to the point of assholery.
These are pics of the front room, incidentally- taken a few months ago. (The blue wood is weatherboarding- the logs are underneath.) You can (or could) actually see the individual axe and adze marks.
If my brother did do this, I have enough clannishness not to pursue it legally, but it will be addressed. I hope he didn’t.
Weird fucking thing, this.
And just for the Flannery O’Connor Theatre de Grotesque touch, there’s an abandoned one room schoolhouse (that was later a private residence then abandoned altogether) that borders this property (it was in my family a century ago but sold to the county to build the school). I was babysat by the old lady who lived there 35 years ago and she used to take me to funerals and have me kiss corpses in exchange for letting me hang out the window on the way home. Well suh, that said same former one-roomed schoolhouse turned Alzheimer’s Daycare was recently the site of a dog-fighting group. The deputy was alone and had no back-up within miles and miles and wasn’t a complete fool (i.e. didn’t jump out, put in his bullet, and say 'Freeze Dirtbag! NITA… JUAAAA-NITA!") so everybody but the dogs got away. Two years ago the guy who lived in the house closest to ours on the west side (about two miles) was shot several times point-blank while his house was ransacked for hours as his wife hid in a secret closet (almost as if this high-school dropout with no visible means of support who built a really nice house thought somehow he might one day need a secret panic-closet). That’s why when I hear somebody say “I’m tired of the shit that goes on in the city- I want to get a little land out in the country and live the quiet life” I laugh- in the city I had a bike and a grill stolen from in front of my house once and in the country our house was burglarized at least once every couple of years.
[QUOTE=Sunspace]
Man, I’ve heard of people stealing the lawn (newly sodded), but never the house!
[/QUOTE]
When I still worked in insurance way up North, I had a client call me to tell me that his house was stolen. He returned to his cabin after an absence of a few months, and it was just gone. It was eventually found a few miles away back in the bush, and it was found by the owner and RCMP doing aerial recon. Hands down the most bizarre claim I’ve ever dealt with.
Dear Sampiro: Keep your mom’s Capodimonte, next time, I want a log.
Well, at least the house probably wasn’t taken with no familial permission whatsoever. Still sucks though, my condolences. If you don’t keep up with property constantly things often go bad.
[QUOTE=Sunspace]
Mmm. Steak-and-kidney pie. Just like mom used to make…
[/QUOTE]
Yanno, it would have been so much more disturbing if you’d said: **Mmm. Steak-and-kidney pie. Just like mom’s. **
All the original meanings, and a few more to disturb the credulous.
[QUOTE=OtakuLoki]
All the original meanings, and a few more to disturb the credulous.
[/QUOTE]
Dang. Missed opurtunity.
Credulity is dangerous–it makes the job of conmen and tyrants easier. We ought to disturb the credulous at every oppurtunity, and provoke them to think.
That sucks, but when you consider that China has had trouble for centuries with local farmers stealing parts of the Great Wall of China to build their farmhouses, I guess it’s not really surprising.
