Fishing for Mr. Brown

My post last week was about being called back to work from being on furlough... to permanently close the building.  Yesterday, on Friday the 13th, the job was completed.  The building is closed and I have returned to furlough.

As the building was emptied, it became harder to do certain things without having all the "stuff" that used to be lying around.  So when I looked and saw a can standing upright at the bottom of the the 40-yard container where old furniture was being tossed, I looked for a ladder to climb down into the container to see if it was a can I needed for my collection.  

But all the ladders had already been sent away.  It's hard for me to accept something as impossible when one wants it bad enough, so I started scrounging the empty building for anything useful to reach down and get the can.  We had nothing long enough to reach that far down.  Since it was standing upright, could I fish it out?

The first thing I needed to make that possible was a "hook" and "line."  A discarded metal rod and an old microphone cable would work.  I taped the bent rod to the cable.

Now how could I extend the cable out far enough to drop down to reach the can?  A broom I had used to sweep the floor earlier could be the "pole."  I taped a roll of duct tape to the end of the broom handle and fed the cable/hook through it.  Now I could extend the hook out over the can and feed the cable through the roll of tape, slowly lowering the hook to the can.

It was a windy day, so aiming that lightweight hook into the mouth of the can was a bit of a challenge, but once it went in it caught the can and I was able to slowly pull the cable and raise the can from the bottom of the dumspter.

Once the can was high enough, I carefully pulled the broom handle in and brought the can to me.

Not only was I proud that I scraped together the parts to make a can fishing pole from a nearly-empty building, I was also able to take pics to document the process so I could write about it today.

Once the can was safely in my hand, I saw it was indeed a can I didn't have.  In fact, I've never heard of it before.  The can is strange also, the bottom is the same as a steel soup can.  And it's a non-standard 8.12 oz sized can.  This can of iced coffee was the last I would get from that building.  But what a last can it was.  Not only is it a very interesting can, but it also made for one of my most interesting can-collecting stories.

And I may have just found a new hobby for this next phase of my furlough... fishing.