The Modern Day Rag Man !.

Do many people on G.C. remember (The Rag Man)?, the man who would come down the street with a horse and cart shouting out in a Foreign Language, because us kids did not know a word he was shouting. We all knew it was the rag man by the noise of the Bugle he would blow,we had visions expecting it to be General Custer making another last stand, or John Wayne.
Yesterday I was in the Garden doing a bit of this and that, when coming down our street was a Gleaming White Transit Van with a Loudspeaker belting out, I thought it was Alex Salmond shouting for Independence.or is it William Wallace, but it was the Modern Day Rag Man in his Gleaming Immaculate White Transit Van.

His calling on the loudspeaker was,We pay top cash for, old lawn mowers,bicycles,cookers,fridges, washing machines, and other electrical items,virtually anything with metal he mentioned. he mentioned old clothes/rags. I thought he said old nags, I had the wife ready for transit.
The van went up and down the street very slowly about six times, with him belting out his message of paying top cash for items.
It's changed days from the Old Rag Man to the Modern Roadrunner.

I think I better stand Guard for a while, over my wrought iron gates and fencing.

 

I remember them Music..... the rag and bone men we knew them as. Ours didn't have a horn but a bell they used to continually clang, up and down the streets. I haven't seen either, with or without horses or vans for donkeys years!

 

The amount our scrappy pays don't even cover the petrol to get there

 

We had a rag and bone man (horse and cart) "Raaaaag-N-Boooooone"
Then there was the toffee apple man "Rrrroast peanuts, Tof-fee Hepples" (on a bicycle, basket and ringing his bicycle bell).
A man in a van selling vegetables on a weekend morning.
Reg, the milkman (always looked puffed out and red faced)
Vic, the ice-cream man (blocks, not the whippy stuff)

Hmm, haven't seen an ice-cream since living here.
Haven't had a milkman for years.
The only veg van is my neighbour and even he doesn't keep veg in it anymore!
No roast peanuts/toffee apples
And if a white van came up our road bellowing out for scrap ... there wouldn't be many to hear him because ... most of them would be out at work!

 

We've still got both round here....the white van man and the 'oss and cart...it's not the same these days though...for a start you don't get a balloon probably something to do with 'elf and safety...don't know how that works though when you see how they stack their goods on the back of that cart....plus you don't see anyone running about with a bucket and spade to collect the 'presents' the horses leave...my dad was always the first one out there....you should have seen his Rhubarb and Roses

 

We have the white pick-up truck man nowadays, he just shouts, very loudly, it must be profitable he comes about 3 times a week, including Sundays, I saw him yesterday.

 

I also remember the 'Betterware' man...he was very smart in his suit ,trilby and Mac carrying his suitcase full of polish and bits and bobs...he always used to give the children minature pots of polish...i can smell the lavender polish now....

 

We had one the other week trying to remove our gates, when I challenged him he said the house owner told him he could have them, when I said I was the owner you should have seen his face.
I did take a photo of his reg plate.

 

I'm not (quite) old enough to remember them from the old days, but we frequently get the scrap-metal men around here.
When we were renovating, we'd got our (brand new, Ikea) kitchen sink in the back outhouse (door closed), while the kitchen was hauled over. One morning I woke to the sound of voices in our back garden, and looked out of the window to find someone marching off with the kitchen sink.
It's the only time I have ever uttered the sentence, "there's someone in our back garden... and they're stealing our *%$£ing sink!!!"
Probably the fastest I have ever moved, but we got the sink back!

 

They're a bit more desperate these days!!!!

Val

 

Thinking about it the rag and boon (black country dialect) gave us either a balloon or a goldfish