Back when there were junkyards....

Government, lawyers, bean counters and nature-the factors for the demise of our way of life. I can live with the last one, it's always been there, it's the first three we could live without.

 

I remember going to Broadway Auto Salvage with my dad when I was a kid. He knew the owners and they use to save every nailhead that came in, we still have 3 425s from there. I tried taking my kid to pick a part and it was such a zoo and people damaging 100 parts to get their 5 dollar part.....we left and got ice cream..

 

My inlaws sold out their predomimatly Ford yard two years ago, I still haven't forgiven them for crushing it out and feeding a OT car I had pissed a circle around four years earlier to the crusher that had been "saved" for me up to that point.
Every lot we used to hit in high school in the 80's around here is gone now, and the scrappers have began to drag away all the cool stuff in the fields that have set for decades.

 

I the 60's and 70's I spent at least one Saturday at the junkyard with my pals looking for parts for the cars we were working on.

I remember one Saturday we visited the yard and had parked the old 55 Chevy truck that belonged to my pal Sam on the end of one long row of wrecks and we had ventured about a 1/4 mile deeper into the yard salvaging parts.

We were out there probably a hour and a half and when we got back to his truck the hood was up and the new Holley carburetor he had just purchased a couple of weeks before was gone!

It turned out that one of the guys working at the yard was looking for a carburetor for a car they were working on and was told there was a 55 truck in the area took the wrong one,,no harm no foul,,,but from then own we could not drive out in the yard. HRP

 

If you are going to a junk yard today & you are a younger person what do think you can use. A computer controled variable cam honda engine? How about a electronic controlled transmission. Or some very nice boby parts for a late model toyota. Ther is a reason that young people dont care about cars or hot-rodding. How much doyou think it would cost to build a traditional "hot rod" using parts that are available today. Yes there are some things available thru trades etc but you can bet that young folks dont know any of the people that have stocked old parts & most who have stocked parts either have them to sell or use.

 

I also used to think about the 'good olds days' of wrecking yards. But, then, instead of just thinking about it, I took the initiative and started my own. So, instead of dreaming of going to a yard, I have my own 'paradise' with hundreds of old Pontiacs to my liking. That started in 1995 outside of Phoenix. Then in 2005, I started looking to start a 2nd one and in 2007, started my 2nd place in eastern Arizona near Springerville in the cooler high country. So, now have two of them. I am not superman- meaning anyone can do it to IF you really have the motivation.
I cannot tell you all just how cool it is to be surrounded by hundreds of old cars. I'll live out my years with this stuff all around me and just love it.
I do not really need 2 of them so, if anyone out there dreaming of owning their own place to park and work on unlimited numbers of their own cars, You can have your own junkard and fill it with whatever you wish. Yes, they are still out there, I still find them and buy them.
5 acres zoned heavy industrial with an industrial use permit for unlilmited storage and restoration of cars, trucks, whatever. These are fully transferable to the next owner. 200 amp power for your welders, machine equip, etc. Most of the property is fenced.
So, we can continue to dream about the old days, or you can actively do something about it and have your own place and build up your own yard! hmmm
here is a link if interested.

http://phoenix.craigslist.org/evl/pts/3646774737.html

 

A good friend mine has a garage stock with all kinds of good stuff from nailheads to big blocks. has gasser hood for a f100 heading in the rafters.

 

Now those were the good ole FUN days.Cool cars,and even cooler junk yards.More fun than a barrel of drunk monkeys.
Good luck.Have fun.Be safe.
Leo

 

Damn, Phoenix must be some sort of weird anomally as far as wrecking yards go. I can go to any one of ten u-pullit type yards and most still run 1/2 price days. Almost all are still pretty well stocked with rear wheeld drive V8 stuff too. It's nothing around here to see late sixties and seventies cars driven everyday as beaters. As far as specialty yards, I can think of about 15 within a 30 mile radius, but most times I pass just because their pricing is nuts. I have a secret yard north of town that still lets me pull my own stuff. His policy on getting hurt in his yard? Don't, 'cause if you get hurt bad enough to require a hospital visit, it's just as easy to drag you off into the near by mountans and dispose of the body in a mine shaft...

 

Is Vic's in Chesney still open?

 

There was a guy with an auto shop across the street from my house when I was a kid (back in the '80's) and the owner always kept some wrecks in the yard next to the shop. I used to stand out on the sidewalk and look through the holes in the fence all the time at the cars. He may have let me in to look, but I never asked. Later when I was in high school he moved the shop to the highway and didn't have any room for his junkyard. I still remember watching his son, from my bedroom window, rebuild a '68 Firebird in the shop. Also, the local Chevy dealer used to be about three blocks from my house and one day when I was about three I wandered over there to look at the cars. Scared the hell out of my parents when they couldn't find me. Lucky I didn't get hit since I had to cross Main Street to get to the lot.

 

i found a horse saddle in the back of a ford bronco once.
cars excite me....but sex in a junk yard?
went to a bone yard to buy an engine and tranny. i listened to it run in the car and said i will take it and come back to get it. the yard guy says "just wait! I will take it out while you wait".
"ok".
he flips the car on it's side with the forklift, takes just a torch and cuts everything, yes EVERYTHING, until the engine and tranny fall to the ground. he put a chain around the water pump and put the dripping, still burning mess in the back of my truck. at that time it was $50+ $1 a cubic inch.

 

These are just some of my parts cars stored at my buddy's junkyard.

 

I was just remembering today how there are no Gas Stations anymoe. We used to hangout in them and talk cars. Yes, there was even grease monkeys there to learn from. They used to do all kinds of mechanic work. no more. No Hot Rod magazine to learn from and drool over the girls in it. All a young man can do today is read the lies and bullshit on the internet. Man , did we screw-up somewhere??

 

Patrolled the junkyards around Lafayette, La. in the mid 70's as a teen. Often run by an old guy in bib overalls who'd eyeball you and the part you asked about and give you a price off thetop of his head.
a few years later when I met my biological Father he still had the same pastime. There were some junkyard owners at his funeral.
Hated the first time I went to a junkyard to look around and only got to stand at a counter and talk to one of the young guys sitting at a computer with a phone headset on, looking up prices based on percentages of new cost.
Gas stations, too. Used to meet some interesting guys there. Occassionally one would have a rod he was building in one of the bays.
Did the drive-ins, too. I was overjoyed to find one in Lebanon! Oregon when we moved from La. Still pissed off that Walmart bought them out to build a supercenter instead of just enlarging the store they had half a mile away!

 

Ratmotor - Privateers like your pal are the only hope left. Would love to spend a day in there. The kind of day golfers would piss away swatting a little white ball around.

 

Lost my wallet with $500 in it in the mid 80's in a junkyard and didn't realize it till I got home.. Raced back and tried to retrace my steps.. Found it in the first car I looked for parts.. I was happy...

 

It was the late 50s. I had my first hot rod, a '47 Ford tudor with a 283 in it coupled to the early Ford driveline featuring a '39 Ford toploader. Being young and dumb, I abused the transmission and was always on the lookout for a replacement. So in the next town north was a junk yard, run by a guy who also drove school bus, guy named Elmer Hogan. One day on my semi-regular trips to check out his new merchandise, there is a nice '39 Ford pickup, clean, no rust, faded paint. I looked at it and figured it was so nice I couldn't afford it on my income. The next day I "speedshifted" my way into needing a replacement transmission. I called Elmer and he said sure, come up and I'll have one for you. Yup, you guessed it, that nice '39 pickup was on its side, torched xmember, and the transmission was on the ground waiting for me for the princely sum of $15. Have always kicked myself.

 

There was 3 good junk yards in Norwalk CT. I would go on a Saturday morning with my toolbox and roam around for hours looking for stuff to use on my build. Try doing that today with insurance companies, OSHA etc.

 

Back in 1971 or so I crashed my first car, 39 Ford Tudor and kinked the front frame a bit. Went to a junkyard (in Miami) and found a rusty 39 convert. The guy flipped it with a forklift and cut out the frame section I needed. Also got the front fender and grille for about $90. I remember seeing about a 1954 Cadillac floral wagon sitting nearby - like a fancy oversized El Camino. Looked perfect, just outdated at the time. Lots of stainless....
When I was about 15 in New Smyrna (just south of Daytona) I remember wandering around an overgrown junkyard and saw a 40 Willys coupe on its side and there was about a 49 Buick with an Indian motorcycle on the back rack...everything covered in pine needles.

 

We had a few old junk yards just outside of town, back in the mid 70s when I graduated from High School. I knew the owners of all of them because I had the chance to hang around with the guys from our local dirt track. Then I used to work on a lot of cars for spending money.
One of the yard owners lived across the block from my parents, and his boys and me spent a lot of years riding bikes & doing model cars together. The school bus would pick us up in front of his house, and in the winter, he would let us stay in his garage while we were waiting for the bus.

After I got married, we bought a house about 1/4 mile from the guys yard. One day, while I was there collecting parts for a project, the guy offered to sell me his yard! The deal was $100,000, turn key, property, license, buildings, equipment, truck, 2 yards full of cars and he would stay on and help me learn the ropes for a year. He would even finance the deal!

I mulled over that decision for a couple weeks, talked with the wife, my dad, my old boss, everyone I trusted, and everyone thought it was a good deal, if that was what I wanted to do with my life. I was 20 (almost 21), married just over a year, had just bought a house (though a cheap one), owed on a car, and had a baby on the way. In the end, I passed! $100,000 was a lot of debt for a 20 year old in 1977.

About a year later, the guy sold it to someone else for more money. That guy crushed out all the cars, to the tune of $150,000 from what I heard, then started dealing with newer cars. A year or two later, they got busted for running a chop shop! There has been a yard at that site all these years, with several different owners over the years, the current guy is a scrapper.

Hindsight being 20/20, I messed that one up! Now looking back, I wonder how life would have turned out if I would have pulled the trigger back in 77. Alas, that was only one of many stupid mistakes I've made in my life, but I don't regret any of my life experiences. They have made me what I am today, good or bad.
Its just, some times you just have to wonder what might have happened. Gene

 

I have a buddy who has a nice yard with lots of old stuff. He's sick and I hope he gets better. If I can buy it I will, but I would much rather he get well. A gruff guy who secretly reads a lot, never gets around to his favorites, he deserves a break.Sorry a couple are put in twice.

 

Back in the fifties and sixties we'd hit the junk yard almost every week end. You could simply, unattended, find the parts you wanted by strolling thru the yard, trying not to trip over all the Ford flatheads laying in the mud and dirt, remove the part and take it up to the office and buy it for pennies on the dollar or buy it if they happened to have what ya needed on the shelf. I boughta 60 k '57 Pontiac engine for a $125 to stick in my "55 Pontiac Chieften 2dr htp cut off a pair of gas tank filler tubes and caps with a hacksaw borrowed from their office to use for exhaust dumps for $4. With a pair of recapped snow tires for "traction" and the engine installed went to my first drag race track. God, I miss those days!

 

in San Rafael we had a drive in by Terra Linda that Tureanies junk yard was next to it

 

I knew a guy in L.A. in the late '50's that owned a junkyard. I spent every weekend there working for free. Built my first '40 coupe from scrounged parts. I still remember there was a '46 Lincoln Continental convertible in there with a flathead Caddy engine and transmission. Don't think he ever sold a part off it. Who would want that junk?

 

My friend of many years died this week.What will happen to the yard is not known at this time. the hours I have spent out there have kept me sane. The hours spent talking to Charles were entertaining as he was a guy with a dry humor and he could talk about cars, historical events, and most anything but family,and politics. The spiritual essence of being alone in a remote area of the yard near sundown made me forget a lot of things that were bugging me. And the idea that these hundreds of old cars could be turned into scrap is a sudden intrusion of reality that nothing is permanent.
In the last two years a lot of theft has been going on there, not by car people but by scrap hunters that stole wheels radiators cat cons on the newer stuff.It's a shame those sorry asses were in a hospital suffering great pain instead of Charles.A month of purgatorial type misery . And to the doctors that couldnt find what was killing him (cancer) until it had progressed too far. I hold them in more contempt that the parasitical thiefs.

 

I hang out a little, at one down the road from my place.
The owners an old hot rodder, and so is his brother, who also works there.
Sometimes I even do a little work for them, but its all turned to modern cars, and the only cool old cars there, are privately owned ones.
Inside the buildings though, its old school greasy grimy dust covered parts everywhere.
There's even a flathead in a cradle, that the owner fires up here and there for fun.
Lots of humour everyday.

 

At the visitation, my friends widow had put pictures up that showed Charles as a family man, and a few of him with sideburns, in t shirts in cars or by his cars, looking at the camera with a scowl.Someone had written the obit in the Meridian Star that told of his love of cars, and they did a good job of it. A big guy about 6' 3" he didn't have very many people mess with him. I remember being with him picking up some cars from another yard when he unearthed a yellow jacket nest. Walked away slowly even though he got stung about 10 times.
He bought a 60 Chrysler 300 F out from under me once, but I figured he had the money to do it right. Problem was, he never worked on his own cars, always patching up cars for other people, just drivers, never a rod .The 300 sits in about 2000 parts.