Funny. Why are Dutch so cheap? What's the backstory on their miserliness? And if you needed a bike, I'd probably have given you our '70s-era Raleigh AND a beer. Next time, go to the suburbs and ask for your auntie Nance.
Reminds me of a man who lived in my hometown. His backyard was filled with empty Miller Lite cans. I mean thousands and thousands of Miller Lite cans. My brother and I would walk by and dream of what we would do with all of the cash-in money. A new bike was also at the top of our lists.
One day my brother asked how he planned to get all of his cans to the recycling center for cash-in. He looked at us, obviously puzzled, and then said, "These cans are my collection!" So, he was just a hoarder.
Awesome story.
enjoy your bike! is the next bottle purchase going to be a burley? we got ours on craigslist, but, um, its for our dogs.
I'm terrible... (and maybe a bit prissy too.) I've lived in Michigan for 6 years now and have never taken returnables back. The Mister does it. He does drink the vast majority of the beer, so it only fair.
It takes guts to return several hundred beer bottles at one time. Even more to do it with two young kids in tow.
I have to say, I also let my 14-month-old son play with objects of questionable cleanliness/appropriateness. Including (on a car ride, when desperation runs high)a bright orange lollipop shaped like a penis and balls that I had in my purse from a bachelorette party.
I'm currently considering selling my old Roadmaster and getting a newer bike because the old one is so heavy that by the time I get it downstairs and out the door I'm too tired to even ride it. And it's got rust in spades.
But something about the effort you put into getting that old Schwinn is making me start to change my mind...
to me, this is the funniest sweet juniper post ever
Oh, man, I am totally having flashbacks to grad school when I would bring trash bags full of empties and would have to wait in line at the Edgewood Meijer in South Lansing. That sticky beer coating the floor smell...why is it that fragrance is such a powerful tool in bringing back memories?
Oh, and it's really nice to see a post about you and the kids doing stuff again. Love it!
I haven't laughed this hard in a long time. Great post, Dutch.
Uh-oh. You've become the Detroit version of Looky, Daddy! (lookydaddy.com). Hilarious, though! Are you going to buy a little bike trailer to haul the kids around in with the next round of bottle returns? Or maybe you'll just build one from scraps you find... Thanks for the laughs. This really was great!
Absolutely hilarious! Thanks for the (empathetic) laugh this afternoon. I truly needed it.
Sounds like you earned that bike. Now what are you going to sell in order to afford a helmet???
my wife says she wants a bike now.
I'm going to try to win her one by selling magazines subscriptions. I read all about it on the back of a comic book.
You could sell your hair?
http://www.detnews.com/article/2...-make-ends-
meet
I swear, reading this, it's like you live in some Cormac McCarthy novel -- with more humor and fewer cannibals.
Next time you have a massive pile of returnables, you could take them to a party store (or a gourmet beer/wine shop for those hard to find brands) where actual real people count them for you... avoid the machines! I tend to horde mine, too- I call it my "emergency fund" 
(warning: most places have a $25 limit, so you might have to stop at 2 different places)
You're so lucky that Michigan has bottle return laws. Here in Indiana, my nightly beer bottles just get tossed into the recycling tub.
LOL at the image of the Bedouin family in the monsoon!!
WHY is it that these places always have only ONE darn glass bottle machine? It's the same situation at the grocery store in Chelsea. One glass bottle swallower, 25 can and plastic machines.
And. You have to do the mass bottle returns in more manageable waves, or hit up different stores to maximize your profits. File that away for future reference, from one Dutchwoman to another (without the "woman" part).
There is a kid's bike trailer for sale in the antique shop next to Hirt in Eastern Market. I don't know how much it was, but it was in decent shape, and definitely not an antiquity.
Also, next time you're in the Corridor, check out The Hub (corner of Cass and MLK). They sell used bikes there, you may be able to find something for Wood.
Here it is the aluminum cans, though you get paid by the private recyclers not a deposit. My parents save them for the guy down the street who survives primarily by recycling. (The rest go to the city recycling, which we pay for. Go figure.) When my sister had her backyard wedding last month, we pulled all the cans out of the recycling for him. He was one happy dude that day.
Classic. I laughed out loud, your descriptions of the scenes are just great.
Now I want a bike.
Very funny. I feel like I have puddles in MY shoes after reading that parking lot scene.
wow, you pretty much described my meijer bottle return experiences to a tee. You just left out the part where I start rocking in a fetal position in the corner while drooling. Oh, and I usually have my twins and 2-1/2 year old with me. Love your detroit talk. I have many fond memories including seeing my first homeless person when I was a kid. He was eating a hamburger out the Mcd's trash can having an argument with the air. Broke my heart
Great post. I know the exact smell of the sticky recycling-center floor...
so, so funny!
you could get the kids sweeping chimneys and have the money saved for another bicycle in no time.
Oh how this story makes me miss home. The dreary bottle depository at any Meijer makes me weak with nostalgia.
Awesome!
Love how it resolves so tidily. And how you're totally going to tell that story to anyone and everyone who asks about your bike. And to the kids whether they ask or not.
A friend of a friend moved here to Texas from up North, and every Thanksgiving, he would bring back a truck loaded with bags of bottles that him and his friends had saved throughout the year.
As he was going home one year, he had a wreck. They said there were bottles EVERYWHERE on the highway.
Hello, I just found your blog from Krista's (http://askyourgod.blogspot.com/) recommendation, and I think I'm hooked. love your sense of humour!
You really make me miss home sometimes. Right down to the sticky floors at the Meijer bottle return.
As part of the Michigan diaspora, I had forgotten about Meijer's and the bottle deposit thing. I will never forget the sickening smell of the bottle return center. The Meijer I frequented had a smell to the compactors. It was a sharp, almost painful pungent stench, like old beer, vomit, piss, and decaying offal mixed with paint thinner, bleach, and turpentine. Good times!
Loved the hilarious story! I live in Amsterdam now, where I return my beer bottles to the automated machine at the grocery story and I ride around on an old, rusty bike. Just like in Detroit, your bike will get stolen here if it's too nice. If you really want to make it a Dutch bike, though, you'll need to put baby seats on the back and the front.
Pic of the bike, pretty please?
Ditto what Heidi just said. Pic please!
My favorite part about the bottle return area has to be the aroma. Isn't it lovely?
oh diane, wait until heidi and krees get their wish!
Wow! Sounds amazing. Post pictures if you can. I just saw a guy riding a yellow one last week. At least, I thought it was an old Schwinn going down the road. Nice.
when i was a senior in college and broke as hell i returned a ton of bottles and cans (and i *may* have *found* an empty keg on some fraternity's porch...what?) so i could get my now husband a birthday present and take him out for thai. in new york state you get 5 cents each, (25 bucks for that keg!) but there is a limit. it's embarrassing that i used to know what the limit was. i had to go to two separate stores!
now we bring our empties back to the beer distributor- do they have those in michigan? like, it's just a store for beer and soda, either retail or you can order stuff for delivery like to a school or something. i won't go by myself with the kids- i just can't. we make it a family trip on the weekend (it happens to be across the street from the ice cream place!) -good times.
ps this was such a great post, jim- classic sweet juniper that i've missed!
haha, congratulations! see kids, hard work pays off.
by the way, I cited you in my term paper for creative prose. You've now been academically cited. Shoot. If that's not success...
this is the best post ever. perfect.
I've been reading your blog for a long time. This is one of the funniest posts you've written! As the mother of an 18 month old (and another on the way, I can picture the whole scene and am sure I'll have similar experiences in the future!
I can't wait for pictures of the $46.30 bike in all its rusty glory.
I like the Jolli Holland thing. Really nice. It kind of reminded me a little of a good friend's music that is so beautiful, it makes me cry every time I listen to it. You should give it a listen, you might like it. Sunshine Doray.
omg, awesome minotaur reference
I concur. Awesome minotaur and labyrinth reference. Classics geeks unite!
Thank you for finally explaining to me why the Michigan bottle deposits are so huge and we get like 1/10th of a penny out here. SNOW and shit.
Ah, that's an insider experience, the Meijer bottle return area. We call that smell "sour dumpster" and this is why I obsessively wash out our empties.
Ahh, Meijers. I missed them when we lived down south. I shop at them again now that we've moved back home.
It used to make me crazy when we lived in TN that they didn't have a bottle deposit. Just didn't seem to make sense!
That's great. I can totally picture the trip from car to store with kids and carts and complaining about rain. I feel ya. Enjoy the bike!
Hilarious and compelling. Meanwhile my $900 bike hangs from the ceiling of my suburban garage and the shifter doesn't work correctly so it never gets used. Thanks for unintentionally giving me guilt.
I love this post - we used to save up our beer bottles in college, then when you turned them all in for the deposit you could buy more beer! It always seemed like 'free money'. Great solution - cleaning up your house and getting a 'free' bike!
Oh your story reminds me of helping my husband (then boyfriend) and his fraternity brothers return bottles/cans after an..ahem...gathering. Yeah, that's it, a gathering!
Also, for those microbrews, try returning them at Merchants in Dearborn. They have an actual person take the glass and they carry more microbrews and world brands than anyone I've seen...it's the only place we can find our beloved Polish beer brands to reminisce (spelling, I know) about our study abroad.
Oh, that smell. I live for your Dutch posts, I won't lie. Rejoice in the cheapness, I say. And man, I miss Meijer.
I think this maybe my favorite story yet. Thanks for sharing and giving me an out-loud laugh over my morning cereal.
Saw that sweet ride when you picked your daughter up from school this week. Very nice. So nice in fact, your daughter wanted to leave and there were goats running around the playground!
Love the story! I agree with Ashley that Merchant's is a good bet for your more obscure returns. And of course, you can always get more there, too. B.T.W. Jim,
Meijer is in Allen Park; I live in Dearborn and we would have been much happier with a Meijer than the Walmart we got, but such is life..Can't wait to see a pic of the bike!
You are brave indeed to face Meijer's bottle return with two kids in tow. That's a situation for which I would have demanded "Divide and conquer" with my husband.
Great story.
There's a liquor store in Farmington Hills that not only accepts bottles of brands it doesn't sell, but just directs you to the back room to dump them, and trusts you to tell the guy back up front how many you brought in. But that wouldn't have made nearly as good a blog post.
i love this story!!! now if only bottles of wine could get a bottle deposit...i would be riding around town on a schwinn of my own!!
this post was so funny when i read it last week (and had trouble commenting from iPhone) that i had to make a special trip over just now to tell you so.
i laughed out loud in my car (parked) while reading it.
You are awesome. This story made me laugh out loud on a very crap day. Thanks.
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