tl;dr: A 2006 journal entry recounts renovating a wrecked house in Pittsburgh during brutal winter, where the author learned that local "scrappers" hunt raw metals rather than furniture—a cast-iron tub left outside vanished within 24 hours. Later, two aging, half-deaf scrappers named Ron and Wade helped haul out a broken furnace, resulting in a chaotic ordeal involving claustrophobia, an axe, and the author pushing a 250lb man over the furnace to escape the stairwell. Their payoff: four cents a pound for steel.