A pickup rolled by, then reversed and stopped in front of the mailbox. “You getting rid of that?” That’s how I met the Metal Man.

I was wrestling a double bed spring up the driveway toward the rolloff. He explained that he recycled metal. There was metal to be found all over: everywhere from people like me cleaning up to construction sites and general trash, even simply discarded on the side of the road. He would haul it away and sort it before taking it to the recycler. The less pre-processing that needs to be done the higher the value. Take wire or cable, for example. Strip the plastic insulation from copper wire and get paid for pure copper.

So I gave him the ancient bed spring and gave him a hand throwing it into the bed of his pickup. Predictably, Metal Man asked whether I was discarding any other metal. This is a house that’s destined for sale or demolition, so there definitely was metal to be found. We walked around the property talking about… well, metal.

It was a real eye-opener, learning how Metal Man could take something that, to me, had a value of less than zero – a heavy, worn out window air conditioner for example, and extract real value. By breaking it down to its component parts, there was several pounds of copper, more of steel, etc.

Despite this fouled economy Metal Man makes money. On a good day, he tells me, he can earn a few hundred bucks. Not too shabby. Which is also why I’m not mentioning his name or number. The nature of Metal Man’s business is such that (while he didn’t come right out and say so) I’m absolutely certain he’s flying under the radar, if you catch my drift. His source materials are free and the recyclers pay anonymous cash. He’s part of a cash economy where each of his dollars is worth about a third more than each of mine. No too shabby. And business is good, to the point that he’s got three others he employs part time as needed, mostly for muscle or sorting.

I’ve got a lot of respect for Metal Man. He’s made something from nothing, found a niche and filled it. He’s got an admirable work ethic. He does what he says he will do and shows up when he says he will show up. He doesn’t make excuses or complain. He smiles a lot. All qualities that you see less and less in our gimme-gimme, me-first world.

I’ve got the feeling that no matter what the future holds, Metal Man will be a survivor.

Six Flags, the world’s largest theme park company with 20 parks in the United States, Canada and Mexico, is bankrupt. Still, they’re moving ahead with planned expansions in Quatar and Dubai.

One of their parks is nearby and I’ve visited quite a number of times since they opened when I was a kid. It used to be a lot of fun. But when they installed the metal detectors a couple of decades or more ago I swore I wouldn’t go anymore. I haven’t quite kept to that.

By all accounts the parks are crowded to capacity. Admission, parking, food – everything - is incredibly expensive, even for Jersey. The lines are painfully long for every ride, all the time. I was there a while back and we spent a good deal of wait time trying to calculate the cost per minute of ride experience. In excruciating detail. It’s okay, we had the time and it was good mental gymnastics. (At least I developed my company’s slogan from that trip, so I suppose it wasn’t a total loss.)

Anyway, can someone please explain to me how it’s possible that a business like that can be bankrupt? I just don’t get it.

I was in an automobile dealership service department yesterday and overheard something I’ve never heard before.

A woman with a Chrysler product needing service was being turned away! Her story, following a good hour of waiting for a diagnosis, unfolded something like this. Chrysler hasn’t been paying their third-party suppliers and so some have stopped, well, supplying. Bummer, but the thing that she needed happened to be affected. There was no stock, nothing available and the prospect of an order being fulfilled was virtually nonexistent.

The service writer went on to advise her to take her plight to Corporate and appeal to them as a wronged customer on the shitty end of the stick, through no fault of her own. It was right about then that the light bulb came on over her head – this was no ordinary conversation. She needed to take notes.

The service writer was sympathetic, gave her specific people and addresses to write to, coached her on what to say, stuff like that. But that doesn’t help her ailing car very much and, after listening to her yap on her phone while she waited for that news, wasn’t what she needed in her life just then.