Our local daily had a couple of interesting stories online today. The interest is personal, like me, to use other words. One story is about something I saw. The other is about something I didn’t see.
Heading back home from the office I saw Beaumont police cars and SUVs parked downtown on Main while others parked on Liberty Street. They seemed to be looking for something. It turns out they were. The coppers were looking for copper, or rather, a copper thief. The Beaumont Enterprise story said the men were found in a vacant building there. A “K-9 Officer,” a dog in other words, and his “partner,” I won’t touch that one, discovered one man in an upstairs bathroom stall. The suspect reportedly possessed cutting tools and strands of copper in a large plastic bag. Police caught the other alleged copper thief as he was leaving the building.
Copper appears to be the modern-day gold, except it is copper, and gold is gold. Got that?
At 2:34 p.m. Central Daylight Savings Time today, gold was moving at $1,216,96 USD per ounce, down 0.37 percent, according to Goldprice.org. When you look again it will be different, marginally up or down. But some experts think gold prices are bottoming out. Who knows? Gold is more mysterious than gasoline when it comes to prices. It’s been that way a lot longer than I have been around.
This chart from MetalPrices.org shows that copper prices have hit a three-month low.
Still, with local recyclers paying between $2.40-2.60 per pound — USD about 3 p.m . CDST — for copper, it wouldn’t take a whole lot to pay for a couple of 40-ouncers and pack of Kools.
Yes, copper is a much sought-after metal. It has been for awhile now. The last Texas legislative session enhanced penalties on copper theft. But, just remember, prices for everything are like gravitation laws. What goes up, must come down. It is a cliche, but it is the easiest way to say it.
The local Enterprise, then later The Baytown Sun, reported Beaumont police nabbed two more alleged “modern copper miners” yesterday who may be involved in more than 70 thefts of the metal. Man, you could buy a s***-load of 40-ouncers with that. Of course, if you are going to steal copper you might as well steal beer and cigs, not that I am advocating that. It’s just an observation.
Also, the Beaumont daily reported that some folks trying to exorcize a few pounds at the World Gym last night were taken aback when John Travolta showed up. The actor, who was a fancy dancer more than 30 years ago in “Saturday Night Fever,” was sporting a full beard (no touch of gray) and told the management he was looking for a place to workout while shooting a move about 20 miles away in Sour Lake. The drama “Life on the Line” is a film set for next year about electrical linemen who do all kinds of stuff (my characterization.)
Now I like some of John’s movie. “Fever” and, OMG, “Urban Cowboy” are shows a dude would only see for a date. And that’s the only way I have seen them at the moving picture show. I think I have admitted this before, but I stopped wearing Western-style shirts when the “Cowboy” sparked a Western-fashion craze.
I have been highly critical in private lately about our local daily. It has been kind of crappy for awhile if you want to know my opinion. These stories are good and are of the kind a “community paper” would have. Maybe you don’t care for Travolta. I am interested in movies being shot in the area. I have once thought of doing location scouting for films. I became a newspaper reporter instead. Now that I am not doing that so much, who knows, maybe I will scout a location for some picture. You never know.
But you take stories such as these, something that grabs your interest because you saw something happening or have some dog you would like to have a hunt in, then you got yourself some journalism. Thanks, BE, but don’t bask too long in the glory. There are always deadlines to meet.
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