Jocelyn Wheeler

HEALTHY, WEALTHY, AND WISE

Frank and his wife, Miranda are in their late 60’s, living on their meager retirement pensions and government subsidies. Frank goes out for his daily walk after having a major heart attack in his 50’s without missing a day. While he takes his walk around their large energetic town, Frank likes to collect aluminum cans. The town’s people have become so accustom to Frank’s can collecting that many just set the bags of cans on the curb for his walk. When Frank returns home from his walks, he puts the aluminum cans in his classic Oldsmobile Coupe, changes out of his walking sneakers for his relaxed loafers, drives over to the next town to recycle the aluminum cans and collect the money for each can recycled. Miranda and the rest of the town’s people do not really pay attention to the money that he collects for their aluminum cans but feel rather relieved that they, themselves do not have to make the unnecessary and out of the way trip to the recycling center. To most people, the cans are just trash so they discard them but for Frank, it keeps him walking and he has a little extra pocket money. Once he has turned in his days collection of cans, Frank takes out his trusty little black book, writes the date in one column, number of cans that he turned in for recycling in another column and in the last column he writes the amount of money that he received. Only Frank knows about this little black book, that he keeps in his glovebox of his classic car.