I had driven by Paul Ansley many times. The first couple times he was just some guy picking up cans on the side of the road. Around the third or fourth time I saw him in yet another spot collecting metal I knew there had to be a story there:
You may have seen him as you went flying by on U.S. 85 or U.S. 34: An elderly man in a bright orange hat and yellow reflective vest walking along the side of the road or bent at the waist in the median.
Five or six days a week, 85-year-old Paul Ansley of Kersey makes a small living picking up aluminum cans and other bits and pieces of metal. He can make anywhere from $2 to $40 a day filling buckets with metal.
As a young man during the Great Depression, Ansley drove cattle for 50 cents a day. He couldn’t afford lunch, but a neighbor of the ranch he worked at would let him pull peaches and plums from the trees along the road.
Ansley’s father taught him the value of hard work, telling him, “Don’t ask for nothing.” He’s retired from ranching, but Ansley still heads out for a workweek of cleaning up metal from the roadside.
Looking at a pile of garbage dumped beside the highway, Ansley says, “If I knew who did this I’d pack it up and take it to them.” He says that it would be better if more people went and picked up trash along the roadways. “Our country would be a prettier place.”
