I’m trying to corrupt my children as early as possible. If I could go back in time to being a young man with few responsibilities, I’d make the decision not to work at a regular job. I’m good at picking things up at yard sales and thrift stores and flipping them for profit. I wish I could do something like that full time. Maybe get a small roll off dumpster truck and make my millions bringing stuff to the dump and picking out the good junk and selling it.
For those of you that have been following the ever-winding saga of my life through blogging, you know that I bought five acres in the middle of nowhere and put a bus on it to camp in (we’ll write more about that later). I’ve got four children and I want them to be able to get out to the middle of nowhere and run around like maniacs once in a while. It’s good for their souls. We like to hike. It’s a beautiful area of high plains/desert. There’s no undergrowth, just a whole lot of openness. The area is also open range, which means if you want the cattle to stay off of your land, you need to put up fences. Otherwise, the cows have free access to your salad bar. I let them roam our five acres. I find their turds good for burning in the absence of real firewood.
On our hikes, we started finding bones. Mostly cow bones, but bones just the same. I’ve been able to teach them a lot of anatomy through the piles we’ve found. The biggest scores for them have been the skulls. We don’t always find skulls with bone piles, but we have often enough.
In the beginning, the boys wanted to save every skull. We collected two cows, a horse, an elk and a coyote skull, along with some antlers. After hanging them on the bus for decoration, their interest in hunting bones remained, but the skulls on the bus just became part of the bus. A friend mentioned that she was looking for skulls and I mentioned to the boys that they could sell them and make money. They walked away with $30 for two skulls. I knew we could get more for the skulls, but the sale was to a friend. Besides, when you’re six and seven years old, $30 is like $300 when you’re grown. At this writing, they’ve sold three skulls and made $45.
They are now talking about bone hunting as an opportunity to make money and have fun, which makes me happy. We should always know how to hustle for our money; to take that thing that cost us next to nothing and make a profit from it – to know where to find the rare item that everyone is looking for and make a profit. Working for the man should be a choice and during hard times. We should always know how to make money alternatively. What do you do to make extra money?
Mike, Oscar, Hotel……out.
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