Art & Inspiration So at what age were you exposed to junk yards?

Many, many moons ago. Bob White, my mother's twin's husband owned a yard in Nampa/Boise, Idaho. I also spent time at wrecking yards on Depot Rd and West Winton Ave (Russell City) in Hayward, CA. The owner of one of the yards on Depot Rd. had permits for keeping a wolf and mountain lion caged on the property. One day, I went with my grandfather to the yard, but not to scrounge for car parts. I watched my grandfather pick up a stick and enter the mountain lion's cage. My grandfather used the stick to rub the lion's back, which was not the least aggressive. My grandfather loved animals (more than people) and had a way with them. On the other hand, I don't think he was quite right upstairs.

 

Lost my virginity in a junk yard, take that visual out of your brain now!

 

brigrat, I told you to stay out of those cages.

 

Hahaha Yup That's what I believe is horse hair they used in the upolstery, I have a few old German and British cars and know the smell well!

 

First time was around 12 a guy down the street had a small yard behind his house maybe 60 cars. The guy worked day and ran the yard evening and weekend.
A neighbor friend and I skipped school one day and spent the day in the yard. What a great day getting to know all the old iron in the yard. A few years later I remember a old yard out on a country road that had a bunch of old cars. Needed a three speed transmission for my 55 always pulling the brass out the second gear synchronizer. So went out in the yard pulled one from a 57 V8 car pulled the side cover it was a good one. Took it up to the old guy who owned the place $20 exchange $10 core charge. So out to the drive way changed the transmission to save the core charge. Always had tools and a old blanket in the trunks just in case. Also the guy sold recap tires I think $18 dollars a piece with a good usable casing. I found two nice matching tires for the rear of the 55 they had checkered flags for tread talk about cool factor. Mounted and balanced down the road shifting and running smooth and broke.

 

I believe I was 10! Dad would buy cheap cars that needed work. Do the work and then flip them. There were many over the years that I helped work on but the one I most remember was a 1954 Henry J. Saturdays he worked at a boat yard repairing outboard motors. That lead to my first paying job at 11. Scraping wooden boat bottoms. $00.11 and hour.

 

I was about 8 or 9 years old and Dad took me to a junk yard to find some needed parts for an old Ford he was working on and when we got there the old guy who ran it was concerned every one was going to steal from him so Dad said we had to talk to him first. I got to meet his dog and watch all of the tricks it could do. Finally we were allowed to get into the yard and get the needed parts. It was a great experience that I will never forget. All of the cool cars that I thought we should drag home and put them back on the street. (some things never change!) I ended up visiting yards for years with my Dad and the last one with him was about 5 years ago. He is 81 and doesn't walk as well as he used to. He is still is messing around on old Fords and Hot Rods but doesn't require the junk yard parts like he used to.
I will never forget the trips.

 

My first time I was 11 years old. Dad needed to replace a damaged right rear door on our '54 Ford family car. He said he needed me to help carry the door after it was removed. There in the junkyard was the '54 Chevy I had seen the week before in the newspaper. A couple teens got killed in it when the driver wrapped it around a phone pole at high speed. The junkyard doubled as a tow in lot for the local police department.

 

Used to go to a salvage yard that was owned by a conglomerate of local car dealers. When they would get a car traded in that was too rough to put on their used car lot they would give it to the yard. At the end of year all the profits were split by the dealers who had brought in cars. They also took junkers from the public, which I did, it usually was penny a pound for complete cars, 1/2 that when missing a engine/trans. About $15.00 for a full size car body. Anyway one time I was removing a head from a 232 Rambler. I threw away the pushrods and soon started throwing them at windows. I remember piercing probably good windshields on surrounding cars... Why? I don't know! How stupid- just a dumb ass, I was....

 

Because you were a kid! Most of my friends, when I was a kid, would bust stuff in a salvage yard and other places ,for that matter! For me, it was not fun…I alway thought maybe there was something wrong with me…but I like saving things, not busting them! Later in life I found out there was a shit load of things wrong with me….. but busting things wasn’t one of them! Lol








Bones

 

In the early seventies, i was a grade school kid. My grandfather lived in north Minneapolis. Up until the early eighties, there were salvage yards right on Washington ave. There were more than a few, some with "checkered" pasts (one involved a murder mystery) There were heavy truck, late model (which were 60-70s cars & trucks) & of course, older models. Those cars & trucks would look at me through chain link fences as we drove by, & i remember wanting to save them, but, just like every city across america, "urban blight" became the new swear word, & all of them disappeared. A few years back, My brother & I found an old yard in central Wisconsin, that had a lot of cars in it, the old dude said it was his private collection, but we were looking for a supposed real 427 impala that was rumored to be in there. he asked where we were from, we told him Mpls., He said, "when the yard i was working at over there closed up, I bought the inventory, had them all trucked over here to his brothers property. The two of them sold parts for awhile, until thieves ruined it. So, they closed up that yard too. He let us in, we found the 427 car(wrecked in 1968), minus the power plant , & i got to visit with the"old friends" I used to see on my way to grandpa's

 

Gotta guess I was around 6... I hung around with my Grampa and he frequented junk yards. He was a depression era gear-head and never quit scrounging. One of the outfits he went to had a bunch of old Diamond-T and C-Cab Macks among others and of course jillions of cars. He used to visit with the owner and sip whiskey in front of a pot belly stove while I climbed around on the coolest "Jungle Jim" of old iron relics a kid could hope for.

 

Hello,

Our dad lived in San Pedro/Terminal Island when he was a little kid. He went to the elementary school on Terminal Island near the location of the canneries. When we lived in the trailer park on the Eastside of the LA River, we used to take drives over the river and out to the big draw bridge or use the pontoon bridge to get to Terminal Island. He used to point out the fact that he grew up there.

So, early history was given to us as little kids. By the time we moved to our first house on the far reaches of Westside of Long Beach, access to Terminal Island was simple and closer. So, we drove to see friends on Terminal Island and across the main channel using the car ferry to reach San Pedro. While on the island, by this time, the junkyards started and the pile up of old beat up cars was evident each time we drove past.

At the time, we had no idea that it was a junkyard and there were other piles of different stuff, like old red trolley cars and such. When my brother finally got his first car in 1956, then we got the word that the scrap piles on Terminal Island were places that we could get parts, if needed. Our friend with the 34 Ford 5 window and big Oldsmobile motor used to go there all of the time to get LaSalle parts and rear end gears. Those were separate parts piles from the wrecked cars.


Jnaki

So, as early as 1947 to see the island and different parts of the whole area and in 1957-60, actually going to the scrap piles near the big draw bridge. But at time moved on and we now had my brother’s first Oldsmobile Sedan to go places, the local Westside of Long Beach scrapyards were popular.

By the time I had my own hot rod, the other junkyards near our Westside of Long Beach home were closer and available to us. In a two block radius, near the Coca Cola Factory on the corner of Santa Fe and Anaheim, there must have been 5 to 10 different scrapyards or junkyards, big and small. It was a booming business. If we could not find it in those close by scrapyards, then a short drive to the Wilmington and South L.A. yards on Main Street, usually did the trick. The scrapyards were all over the place, as no one wanted to build anything on those empty open spaces of So Cal.

NOTE:
Later on when the need arose for a replacement part for one of our family cars, I called all over the big OC and no one had one. So, I decided to call several near our old Westside of Long Beach house. On the second scrapyard, the guy told me what he had and it was worth driving 100 miles to get the part for the repair. It helps to know who has most of the stuff still around. Now, those places are called auto recycling places and parts are listed on computer screens.

 

About 5yrs old, ..
Then came home an took a hammer to all my hot wheels/matchbox cars an flattened them like the crusher at said yard..

 

Sixteen, blew the 3.08's in my 57 Chevy, found a 4.11 third member at the local wrecking yard, man did that wake up that tired 283, a week later broke an axle, imagine that!

 

I hung around with guys from the neighborhood that were mostly a few years older then me so when they were getting drivers license I was maybe 12 or 13. This would have been the early 60’s. In my neighborhood first cars were rarely reliable so required lots of trips to the junk yards for parts. New world for me that I always enjoyed.

 

Six years old when I started 1st grade. My school was close to the junkyard my dad owned so he would drop me off in the morning and pick me up at 3pm. We would go back to the yard until close about 5:30. I would play in the old cars, looking for loose change and soda bottles to turn in for the deposit. As I got older, I began pulling parts to put in the shelf before they were scrapped.

10943699_10203682089796347_2284603393024878785_n by onetrickpony posted Oct 22, 2015 at 12:03 PM

 

It was in 62.I was about 13 ..Our go to salvage yard was Montavys auto salvage on Wilson rd in Independence. Got to be good friends with him and he use to let me run a tab .

 

About age 6 (1966) - my dad gave in to my begging, took me to a local junk yard (I was thrilled) and bought me a dinged-up '55 Dodge wheel cover. Still have it - thanks Dad!
(top center of picture - in storage now since moving back to CA)

 

Can't believe I missed this post. Dad bought a salvage in 1960, when I was 17, retired in 1990. Lots of good memories. Starting in 61, I worked for an airline 5 days a week, but arranged my schedule so that I could work 3 days at the shop for years. One day every week was l o n g.....

 

I was around 8 years old, after my parents divorced it was a couple
Years before I was able to spend some time with my dad. He'd got a job managing a wrecking yard and I got to hang out there a couple summers. For kid who loved cars it was magical. Later when I was a teenager I spent countless hours in junk yards scrounging for parts for my OT cars.

 

At 5- with my gramps, looking for REO OA 331 engines for his lime spreaders. He used to buy the REOs new, and would drive a couple guys to Lansing to pick them up at the factory and drive them home. In the picture from '58 there are a pair of '51 E-22's, and a pair of '53 F-20's. By '61 that Chebbie pickup had become a flatbed, replaced by a new Dodge D200. The '50 Chebbie 2-ton had been donated to the VFD to become a tanker truck, replaced with a new '60 REO, and his first REO deuce and a half, with two more added later. The gent in the rear was Uncle Ted, who would rebuild those REO sixes, and taught me the basics, straight, round and spotlessly clean. In the middle is my Uncle Del, and the large fellow in the foreground was Gramps. Gramps still had the IH dealership at that point, so there were several IH farm trucks and ten wheel dumps around too. That pic was taken to show off the just-installed new two-way radio system, first in the area. Those old REOs were the sweetest-sounding sixes

 

As a young kid (no more than 10), I have several memories of tagging along with my dad (when he had night shifts) as he made the rounds dropping off scrap aluminum he and his brother collected at the curb side at the local scrap dealer amongst other places including junk yards. Went to a lot of auctions as well. They did what they could to earn a little extra money aside from his various factory jobs. Funniest was when he had brought in his 66 Fairlane for some work at a local Firestone garage. They tried to tell/sell him on a new battery and had actually replaced it with the new one. He was 6’-2” and I remember him yelling at the manager saying if they didn’t put his battery back in his was going to throw it on the guy’s foot. They put his original battery back in the car. Lol!

 

As I was the only car-crazy person in the immediate family, there was no "tagging along with Dad". At 12 years old, I took the city bus to a hobby shop (Hobby City in Anaheim, CA). Across the street was a wrecking yard. I wandered over there, somehow...kind of like it was an alien power pulling me to it's spaceship....lol. I somehow just walked in and browsed around...it was way cool!! I felt like it was special and I was somewhere you weren't supposed to be. And I have being going ever since!! Years later, I found out my paternal Grandfather (he died six years before I was born) actually worked at a junkyard in Iowa. So it is in my blood...Lol!!
BTW, that wrecking yard is still there and is now a Pick Your Part yard.

 

Santa Clara Auto Wreckers was the first for me. My two buds, Pat & Mike Donahue, were also car crazy, we had built sidewalk racers, (like 'soapbox cars', only more 'hot rod') The year was 1952...
We knew Don and Mark Atlas, the owners of the yard...Their Dad knew our folks, Santa Clara was once a small, friendly town. And my grandmother was a local 'pioneer'.
Donahues and I were 10 & 11, read Hot Rod, Car Craft, R & C, and HONK mags...
Max invited us to the yard to look around...We went!
There were some real nice possibles, (a '33 three window, missing the engine; '32 Tudor, a 'B' 4 banger; Some T's, one was a hot rod roadster ('23 turtle deck with a Midget nose, very smashed up; I told my pals "Ritchie could straighten that one..."
What a place! It was just as if we had turned a corner into some surrealistic heaven place, where dirty hands and greasy Levi's were the mode of the day!
Don Atlas was 'comical'...He'd look up at the ceiling when asked about a certain make & model...then, dramatically jerk sideways, SNAP his fingers, saying..."Wait a minute! Is that a coupe you're looking for? A '49? It's right down the center row, 2nd from the end. It's blue..."
Whew! A whole act! It seemed like a commercial was due. His brother Mark was also nice, but quiet. Max, the Dad, was all business.
I frequented their biz for 3 years after I got my license, then they moved to a larger location, on Comstock Ave.
Still a great place for parts, but later models now filled the yard...

When I got my '50 Olds Coupe, it had a '57 J2 engine, '37 LaSalle box. Box was blown, I got the Olds cheap. The guy that put the Olds in kept breaking boxes...3 trannys later, he sold it to me.
Sut's Auto Wreckers was Cad/Olds/Buick headquarters...There were 3 '38-'39 Buicks that ran every week at Fremont drags, Wilbur Sut sponsored 2 of 'em...
They had gears, bearings, gaskets & seals for Cad sticks (!) and LaSalle/Roadmaster boxes. One stop.
Olds stick flywheels, Cad 'starter change overs, name it.

Fords were my favorites, liked the 'Y' blocks, after MANY flatheads in numerous coupes and street roadsters...
Paul Navarro wreckers specialized in police cars, so my first 332 FE (with solid lifters & adj. rockers) came from there. A 352 was next, a bolt-in for my '54 Ford coupe. (I've had 7 of those, all coupes! On my 7th right now, w/406)
There were auto wreckers that 'specialized', in the '60s...Some were the aforementioned. Also Mayfair wreckers, and my then-new favorite: Tex's Auto Wreckers.
I went into the custom reversed steel wheels business, (why going to San Jose Tech) Pal Don Serventi and I were manufacturing "dumped rims" for Ford, Chev, and Olds; Buick outers mostly, but cheap EELCO linkage got modified by better link hookups and chopping off the spindly stick. We'd then weld on a '55-'57 Chev clutch or brake pedal arm, our own 'Hurst type'! Sold like hot cakes! As did our 'Traction bastards'...3/4" black pipe welded onto steel tube 'eyes', and welded brackets with rubber shock grommets.
Most cars at Lincoln High were 'L&S Equipped'. We needed our own decal...never happened.
Yeah... Wrecking Yards raised me. And the Donahues.