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**Doc Rocknocker** · 09-24-2009, 08:58 AM

Scrapyard Stories, Part II

We had taken in a load of old dental equipment. Seems 5 or 6 neighbourhood dentists decided to retire at near the same time and they, much to their consternation, discovered that old, antique-looking, but not really antique, well used and positively obsolete dental equipment was worth precisely:

Dick.

Hence, we came into possession of them in the scrap yard.

Now, in this pile were 3 or 4 old dental X-ray units. These were radium-powered units and still had the radioactive source ensconced within. At the yard, we dealt with radioactive substances once in a while (we would get old water-well logging tools (with their Americium-137 source, if you must know), radio-tracers from the water department, off-cast filters from the Point Beach reactor facility; typically low-level sort of stuff).

We would remove the sources, and put them into special lead-lined boxes to later be collected by either the local university or agents of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (we were one of few sites that actually applied for a “Radioactive Agent Permit” which was, paradoxically and totally unexpectedly, awarded). However, we were more than a bit lax about the whole affair. The box could be locked (but usually wasn’t), and items were generally just tossed in the box and the lid slammed shut.

Ahhhh…the late ‘70’s…

Anyways…

Now, these radium sources were bright and shiny, looking just like an oversized and metallic Tylenol™. It was odd in that it was warm to the touch (not that we touched them much without protection) and the metal didn’t seem to rust or corrode. This proved to be just too tempting to one SC. We often had people wandering around the yard, looking for this part or that gizmo, so we never really paid wandering folks much mind. However, you had to see either Pinky or Czack to get permission to wander around and the obligatory hardhat, and this character didn’t and hadn’t.

Pinky came out and started screaming that this guy shouldn’t be in the yard. So, Randy and I wander over to where he’d been rooting around and informed him that if he wants to snuffle around out in the yard, he’d best see the owner and get permission.

The guy goes instantly non-linear.

Completely ballistic.

Completely off the rails, upsetting his personal crazy train...

He starts screaming about his rights, and he’ll have us arrested for “detaining him” (when he just wandered in and flabbled around for the last couple of hours), and other sundry threats.

Randy and I exchange looks like: “If you hold him, I’ll kill him”, but decide that discretion is the better part of valour (and at only $28.50/hour, we’re not about to go to the mat with this whack-job).

Pinky runs out and screams for us to “bolt the doors” (the man was absolutely clairvoyant when it came to thieves and pilferers), grabs the SC and holds him until the local cops could show up (he had them on the 70’s equivalent of speed-dial and I’m certain that the police had us on their GPS (or whatever existed at the time that would be a fair substitute)).

Grudgingly, Randy and I corral the miscreant and ask, very politely, if he has on his person anything that he might have picked up in his perambulations of the premises.
And if you believe that, there’s this bridge in Brooklyn that’s just waiting to be sold for scrap. Offers?

WARNING: POTENTIALLY ICKY PASSAGE TO FOLLOW

Of course, he roundly denies any wrongdoing. In retrospect, if he had, he might not have run up such exorbitant bills at St. Catherine’s General.

It took the police about an hour to arrive (theft at a scrap yard just doesn’t rank up there with underage drinking and border-town citizens buying loads of smokes to transport covertly across state lines), so Mr. Sneaky sat in Czach’s office, waiting for the air to clear, Czach’s bottle to empty, and the federales to arrive.

When they finally did turn up, they were treated to a most unusual display: the earlier pilfering suspect was now doing a credible imitation of someone who had just poured a large bottle of organic, pesticide-free Apis-friendly honey in his lap and plonked down on a large busy fire ant mound.

Seems Mr. Sticky-fingers had found an unlocked box which contained several burnished (“Ohhh! Shiny!”), slightly warm-to-the-touch canisters which have spent the last couple of hours cheek-by-jowl (if you will) with his, well, let’s just call it: “his happy place”.

Needless to say, ‘his happy place’ was now none too happy.

In fact, it was downright miserable.

He was the proud recipient of a surfeit of ionizing radiation which was rapidly doing its best to both unravel his DNA and make his reproductive activities from this point onward, well, rather pointless.

He suffered some rather unpleasant and awkward second degree radiation burns, sort of like one would get visiting a nude beach for the first time (in August, in Cabo san Lucas) and forgetting your SPF2000, which was supposed to be applied in certain strategic places.

He was charged with a first degree misdemeanor for theft and a Class A felony for stupidity. Hopefully, the Darwin Award fund will cover his medical costs; short of reconstructive surgery.

Leaving this sordid tale, we delve into yet another. This I call the “Whiner”. Typically, a trailer-trash denizen of the first water. Universally unkempt: smelly, nasty and wholly disordered.

The typical plaints were, once they wheeled in a rusty pram-full of old, soggy newspapers, mouldy magazines or obviously pilfered paraphernalia: “Why won’t you buy this from me? I need money for beer/ skag/horse/crack/my baby.”

“Sorry, but the landfill is the only place where you can dispose of this shit.”, I offered.

Cue NORAD as they proceed to go, yet again, non-linear.

I normally turn these dolts over to Pinky (Hell… it’s his yard.) and let him deal with these bottom-dwellers. But since it was a slow day, I thought it’d be fun to see what colour I could get them to turn.

“But I need (fill in the blank with favourite non-essential), and these are my great aunt’s uncle-in-law’s cousin’s nephew’s best friend’s grandfather’s war medals. They gotta be worth a few bucks.”

“No, perhaps you should wait a decade or two and try to unload them on something that will eventually be called ‘Ebay’.”

Well, no.

Not really.

I explained that we are not a fence, nor a pawnshop and we only deal in scrap. Not mementos. Not war trophies, nor a dump yard (had one old codger bring in a 3-inch cannon shell that he somehow wheedled back from the Pacific…Yee, haw!…), nor useless, nasty and obviously worthless junk. Sanford and Son’s (or Steptoe and Son’s for our Brit buddies…Right. That’s it, no more British translations) we’re not.

Watching the gears slowly grind in the process that passes for thought in these cretins, the slight wisps of smoke are dead giveaways, I await the inevitable.

[“Let’s see…I tried whining. Let’s try false bravado…Yeah!”]

“You have to buy them from me. It’s the law.”

“Well, since you brought up the law, let me call the cops to see if any of your trinkets have recently been reported as missing…”

95 times out of 100, the next thing I see is the SC’s backside as they scurry out of the yard.

This was one of the other 5.

“This stuff isn’t hot!”.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. I’m just doing what the owner wants. Tell you what…(…I’m nothing if not reasonable…Yeah, right…), leave them here for a couple of weeks and if no one shows up looking for them (we had this happen regularly, just like pawnshops get regular visits from the police), we’ll see if they’re really worth anything. Don’t worry, you’ll get a receipt (and we’ll get your contact information)”.

4 out of 5 times this works and the SC bolts in a flurry of disgust and the vague redolence of old gherkins and kerosene.

This was that one abysmal time where the other 99 simply admitted defeat.

“God damn it. You’re going to give me my money or I’ll kick your…”

“8…9…10…DingDingDing! Yer’ outta here!”

“Put your pencils down and step away from the scrap pile!”

You have just crossed the Rubicon and I am legally empowered to toss your happy ass off the premises.

I used to live for days like this…but, then again, I am a misanthrope.

As I noted in earlier screeds, I am not now, nor whenever had been, what would be considered in any way, shape or form “small” (at the time about 185cm tall and 130kg in mass, plus or minus a gram and/or angstrom unit or two). And I have this wonderful inventory of tools: rip hammers, sledge hammers, (hell, we had lots of hammers), bar stock, angle iron, Hapkido training and a couple of meaty fists at my disposal.

I believe the proper term used was: “Urrk!” as I physically picked the malefactor up by the collar and belt and frog-marched him off the property. He made the most satisfying “splat” as he hit the pavement out front of the yard, closely followed by the merry tinkle of his precious bits and bobs that followed him immediately thereafter. He was either astonished enough by his brief reprieve from gravity or was still trying, like the ‘ball in the cup’ game, to get his somewhat less-than-ample grey matter functioning again.

Luckily, he quickly departed and we never saw him again.

The next thing I knew it was Pinky barking at me that it’s lunch time and I need to bring him a strawberry shake.

We did go to A&W often; but how the hell he always knew in advance was very, very strange…

Next up, there’s this piece of human driftwood, one I christen: the “Nosy on-looker”. Typically not a SC by definition (I believe “a purchase” would necessarily be involved to gain that title), but seriously annoying to the point of wanting to stuff him into a bush hog after 5 or 6 hours of his well-intentioned banter. These characters are usually harmless old pharts; veterans (of course), retired and nothing better to do before the VFW hall opens, than to come over and regale us with endless stories. As mentioned, they never buy/sell anything, just stand on the sidelines and give free advice (which is worth every penny) and a running commentary.

Occasionally, the story was mildly interesting (hell, my Dad could have filled in if one of these characters ever got the sniffles), but sort of lost its dynamism after the 254th telling; particularly when it’s punctuated with the raucous whipsong of a heavy sledge upon the pile of radiators I was currently dismantling.

I didn’t really mind too terribly until after we grew sort of accustomed to them and they seemed to think that our sporadic “Humph.” was an indication that they should press on and they would have full access to the yard.

**Doc Rocknocker** · 09-24-2009, 08:59 AM

Scrapyard Stories, Part 3

WARNING: POTENTIALLY ICKY PASSAGE TO FOLLOW

Then, on a bright and sunny day, one venerable old phart was following me around the yard, babbling incessantly, when he perchance sauntered a shade too close to a pile of dismantled scrap aluminium window frames and, well, unbeknownst to us, sliced his arm open from shoulder to elbow.

I think the term he employed was: “Ow.”

Actually, it was more like: “Holy fucking shit! I’m bleeding to death!”

This necessitated our shutting down the yard for a few hours, calling the ambulance, notifying OSHA of an accident and the concomitant reams of paperwork that inevitably followed. Czach, with lightning-fast reflexes and a desire to avoid any additional work, paper or otherwise, opened a new bottle of whiskey.

Then we had to hose down the yard and search for the codger’s watch that he somehow managed to lose during his immediate post-gash decapitated-chicken dance.
Pinky immediately forbade this type of activity henceforth; Jack swore and poured himself another double. All us yard hands nodded in accordance and went to the A&W for chili dogs and strawberry shakes.

We never did find that watch.

Next up in this rollicking cavalcade of suckousity is a relative of our old friend, Mr. Sticky Fingers (mentioned in glowing detail previous): the “Obvious Thief”, of which are two distinct varieties, which I will detail individually. The first is one who comes into the yard dragging the most badly chosen, strangely familiar, yet out of place, items which he (invariably, it’s a he) tries to transmogrify into some quick cash. He brings in items like, oh, let’s say…manhole covers (stamped “Wis. Dep’t. of Public Works”), hundreds and hundreds of meters of weather-beaten, odd-lot sort of bundles of copper cable (marked with the seal of Wis. Elec. Power Co.) and even fire hydrants.

One almost has to admire the sheer get-along-little-doggy bravado of not only swiping a fireplug but actually having the brass (painful pun, as the innards of these critters are finely machined brass and worth, new, a few hundred bucks) to try and sell it off as scrap for a paltry few dollars worth of beer money.

These guys were actually very easy to deal with: we detained them with various degrees of small talk; keeping them in the yard and off guard until the police show up. But to what avail? The recidivism rate for these characters was enormous. It was only a Class “Q” or so misdemeanour (tell that to the person whose house burned to the property lines due to lack of water connections for the fire brigade or the chap who just busted a wheel off his new Range Rover after hitting an open manhole, sans cover) and the police were obliged to come corral these critters, as we were obliged to rat them out.

We had these several of these type of goofs show up almost weekly.

A related species to the “Obvious Thief” was “The Even More Obvious Thief”. This goober would wander into the yard with an empty bag, box or crate. He’d set it down and very, very carefully watch the yard for his chance of grabbing something: typically unusual looking, easily identifiable, invariably expensive (well, you can’t hide everything…), and stuff it in his poke.

He’d (again, always a he) then try to sell it off as his own and try to swindle Pinky and Czack into buying back their own stuff.

Did I mention that Pinky and Czack were Jewish? Far be it from me to perpetuate a stereotype (no fratching here, it’s near verbatim from P&C); but no one, and I mean no one, is going to financially out-clever a couple of grizzled old concentration camp ex-inmates; even with inspired impressionistic knees-bent running-about advancing behaviours.

I mean that with both admiration and approval.

For the record, in Pinky’s own words: “Ain’t no one gonna out-Jew this old Jew.”

For all their tight-fisted reign of the yard, their insane fiscal “scrupulousness” (i.e., they were so fucking cheap), and their seeming photographic (OK, ‘pornographic’ in Czach’s case) recollection; there is no way…no way in hell…no fucking way, someone is going to get the financial better of these two characters.

The entire yard would gather when one of the more obvious clade of obvious thief tried his hand at a quick round of “fleece the owner”. We’d stand around (surreptitiously blocking the only exit) and take in the torrent of abuse and derision Pinky and Czack heaped upon these poor unsuspecting idiots. Never once did Pinky call the cops on this subspecies of vagrant benthos, nor did they ever physically assault them; but at the end of one his and Czack’s tag-team tirades, we’d need an ambulance, a wire brush, Dettol, a fire hose, and mop to clean up the resultant mess.

Don Rickles was Mother Teresa compared to these two when someone dared cross this dual Hebrew Rubicon.

Of course, after all this, we had to go to the A&W to get 2 extra-large strawberry shakes.

Verbal exsanguinations must be thirsty work.

Moving right along, we come to the bane of all scrap yards: “The Scrounger SC”. Typically, some form or another of Yuppified ‘sweater-tied-around-the-neck’, Birkenstock wearing, bleach-blond doofus who recently came into a small inheritance. He had immediate delusions of Bill Gates-ianism and thinks that the rusted-out old shitbox ride he had as a diminutive high-school whelp would be “Primo” if he could only restore the thing.

Bucko. Here’s some advice: call American Hotrods and tell them Boyd Coddington (RIP, sorry, but he passed while this was being written): “I sent you”.

Motorcycle restorers may be dreadful (see Paul Sr., virtually anytime).

“Classic” car restorers are worse.

Invariably, they’ll embark on the epic quest to find that elusive left-door handle for the 1962 Belchfire Supreme that they’re adamant on restoring.

To say he’s always in the way (he crossed a few palms with nickel, if not silver, to gain access to our automotive sanctum sanctorum…hell, that’s where we stash all the good shit for our “classic rides”: our Gremlins, our AMXs and odd Firebird…) is like saying Lake Michigan is somewhat soggy. Damned if he’s not always in the way when the forklift roars through or he’s precariously perched on a 5-deep pile of rusting hulks trying to find that “special lug nut” or “perfect gas cap” when we rev up the crane to dispose of a few carcasses.

Now, personally, I don’t mind animal testing if it’s for a good cause, though I strongly oppose vivisection on advanced animals. But cretins of this ilk are ripe and ready for inclusion to any biomedical study (the more painful, the better).

Except for breeding; that’s right out.

Invariably, they will find the bit, bobble, or piece of automotive debris to make their dream complete. Customarily it’ll be old, rusted, pitted and obviously original.
Whereupon comes the inevitable seiche of suck: “Have you got this in blue?”

Once, and only once, I made the ultimate mistake of actually responding to one of these Faustian nightmares.

“Um. No. No way. That’s the only one I’ve ever seen.”

Queue the gallery.

“Are you sure?”

Is deep crimson a normal Caucasian colour?

“Yes. I am very sure. Totally sure. Absurdly sure. Even more wholly than absolutely sure. In fact, I know every square millimetre of this yard by heart and you, Sir, have recovered the Holy Grail of automotiveness. You’ve found the only (insert trivial piece of ‘classic’ car chromitude) that we have. There are no others, either in this yard or, in fact, on this planet or galaxy. Congratulations. Your parents must be very proud. The check-out desk is over that way. Ask for Czack.”

Assholes.

May your all paint be lead based.

Moving along allegro non troppo (‘brightly, but not too fast’), we come to that most inconsiderate SC: the dead one.

WARNING: POTENTIALLY REALLY ICKY PASSAGE TO FOLLOW

OK, this is where the genuinely icky hits the road.

And walls.

And roof.

You have been summarily warned.

(No one leaves...

I like that…)

We took in practically everything made of metal; anything that could conceivably turn a profit. That included old kitchen appliances. Here I must digress: in the USA, there was a concerted effort to get people to quit dumping old refrigerators.

They are, were, and continue to be: death traps.

They had locking mechanisms, (recall, gentle reader, the time frame in which all this transpired…for those of you disinclined to page back: “the late ‘70’s”) which were totally incapable of being opened from the inside. There were several heart-wrenching stories of children, believing this would make a ‘real cool hideout’, asphyxiating inside old abandoned refrigerators.

I don’t mean in any way to denigrate these poignant episodes, but we were still tasked to retrieve any old, abandoned fridge that was found, and it was, if I may be permitted to make a small NSFW digression, a major pain in the ass.

The upshot, that warmed Pinky’s cardiac cockles, is that he got the (1.) fridge (he usually sent Mark and me out in the scrap yard’s un-tuned and obstinate truck to collect the bloody thing, no matter if it was buried under two meters of Sangamonian glacial clay), (b.) EPA credits for removing a Freon (a CFC…a chlorinated fluorocarbon (dichlorodifluoromethane; if you must know (a fad just starting to gain momentum; right after the outrage at petrol prices and demanding the glassification of all Middle Eastern emirates)) source from the environment, and (iii.) all that lovely copper plumbing, for free.

We regularly went out in the county and retrieved 4 or 5 of these dumped bastards per month.

Most were without doors (dumping an old fridge was bad enough (they made great targets for deer hunters wishing to sight in their new .30/06),
but dumping an old fridge which later contained a cyanotic 9-year old paled beyond most human ken), but some went diametrically the other direction and had the doors sealed with everything from duct tape to heli-arc welding.

Which, sort of round-aboutedly, returns us to the story.

Usually, we’d strip off all the copper (letting all those fine CFC’s vent to the open air…remember, kind reader, the time frame of all this), bust off all the porcelain (which was absolutely worthless), and reduce it to component parts.

**Doc Rocknocker** · 09-24-2009, 09:00 AM

Scrapyard Stories, Part iiii

Then the fridge posed no problem. We’d use Jaws and rip the thing open, discard the noisome contents (some people actually threw out fridges full of beer and liquor…amazing what a quick wash and CO2 fire extinguisher could do...) and rip apart the body, getting it ready for the baler.

But, one day, the suckiest customer of all suckitude showed up.

Or actually, did not show up; but rather burst, quite literally, upon the scene.

WARNING: SERIOUSLY ICKY PASSAGE TO FOLLOW

Well, Mark and I delivered the 4 or 5 wayward fridges to the scrap yard. Surprisingly enough, Czack set up some sort of incomprehensible paper trail flowchart where odd lots were checked in (there was always a blizzard of paperwork; I can sort of, some what, understand Czack’s infatuation with Jack Daniel’s), registered and summarily of which they were disposed.

Paul grabbed an oxygen lance, one of my cigars (“YOU BASTARD!”), and proceeded to dissect a series of off-cast collectibles which we had collected.

After about an hour, there was a short lapse as Paul sheared off the remaining copper, venting all those wonderful ammoniac and CFC-laden gases Antarctic-ward, then proceeded to lance into the next occupant in the line of the latest gathering of fridges which we had collected.

He had just started torching open fridge number three, when there was a massive explosion.

Pinky yelled: “Marty! God damn it! Enough with the dynamite!”

“Wasn’t me, Pinky.”

This time.

Paul picked himself up; ineffectually brushing off the various bits and pieces of organic debris that followed. We did our best to extinguish the fires. The whole yard rushed over and helped pick up what remained.

Evidently there had been a human body in fridge number 3.

Seems the O2 lance had not only opened up the crypt that was the fridge, but also ignited the gasses of decomposition.

The results were, for the lack of a better idiom: “stunningly spectacular”.

And stunningly spectacularly messy.

Somehow, given the late 1970’s equivalent of CSI, the character inside the fridge was already figured to be, well, seriously, well, dead.

“Bummer, dude”.

Seems the unfortunate occupant was, in all probability, the unwilling and ungrateful recipient of a high-speed, up close, and very personal .45 calibre lobotomy (“execution-style”, according to the official papers: after we rummaged around the yard and found what remained of his combusted coconut hiding in the weeds some 50m distant) who was also very enthusiastically, and very emphatically, deceased when sealed into the fridge.

Some people have no class.

Especially corpses.

Especially corpses strewn over approximately 250 square meters.

Paul had sort of a retroactive case of the jibblies, as he scrutinized the scene and then looked down at the leather shop apron he was wearing.

Suffice to say, he could have answered the casting call for any George Romero movie filming in the area. He looked like he had been wading through the blood tank of a slaughterhouse (see my previous work, available at www.customerssuck.com, for the inner details of the functioning of such a place – Ed.).

He was, well, a bit of a mess.

“Um, Paul. You’ve got intestines all over your pants.” I offered.

Mitch helps him out with: “Yeah. You’ve got brains all over your, ick, hat….”

Paul adds to the chromaticity of the drab scrap yard by promptly regurgitating (a singular tragedy since he just returned from the A&W and the gurgitating of a couple of Poppa burgers and a large root beer), energetically and enthusiastically, all over the landscape.

Luckily, we did have D&D (douse and disinfect) stations all over the yard.

Paul, not caring about local mores and graciousness; stripped down to nothing more than his woolen socks and stood in the cleansing and chilly spray of the shower; upchucking uproariously and cursing the day he ever went to Employment Services.

We were all introspect.

A human being who had his life abruptly terminated by the vicious act of murder had just messily exploded and distributed himself aggressively all over the local landscape and fellow co-worker.

It was a time for solemnity.

A time for reflection.

We silently pondered the human condition and the inevitability of our own mortality.

Yeah, right.

We were all laughing our asses off.

There was literal rolling on the ground in hysterics. Paul was less than amused. But, he persevered, and didn’t quit until that fall when he married and headed east.
Occasionally, I post him packages of beef tripe and lamb’s heads from the Middle East; but only on very religious holidays.

I probably have a contract on me the moment I step into the USA, but I’d wager that Paul is secretly glad cell phone cameras and YouTube didn’t exist back then.
We all went to the A&W for a bag of momma burgers, curly fries and root beers (chili dogs were, for some reason, off the list de jure).

And, yes, we did bring back two strawberry shakes for Pinky and Czack.

Moving right along, we next happen upon that unique individual we shall designate “The Not Sucky Customer” (just to somewhat balance the load).

This person was an oddity in the scrap yard; cautious, courteous and actually possessing more than two brain cells which he could call his own.

We had hordes of “treasure seekers” that would while away an afternoon digging through the piles in hope of finding the proverbial ‘needle in a haystack’, or in this case, the ‘jewel amongst the overburden’.

He was an older gentleman; well-graying of visage, well kempt, and well-mannered. He stood out like a sore thumb against the usual assortment of assholes (workers included) when he was in the yard.

He bade me over to a pile destined to the baler and inquired about an absolutely ghastly piece of ostensible pot-metal sculpture.

“Can I please take a look at that?”, he asked.

“Sure.”

What the hell? Pinky let this guy in and he seems a tolerable sort.

So, I dig into the pile and excavate the surprisingly heavy cast sculpture of some sort of Greco-Roman FTD-Florist sort of demigod.

It was horrific.

He was entranced.

He intently studies it for 15 or so minutes and breathlessly asks me if I’ve ever seen another, perhaps in this very yard.

“Good news, everybody!”

A bit of background; we took in all manner of yard kitsch: lawn jockeys, garden gnomes, and odd-lot assortments of junk that people found the previous tenants’ had left behind. So, an appalling statue of a winged, though tiny-titted (yes…I did look…), nude never caused so much as a blink.

Continuing: I went to search the yard, and found the statues counterpart lying in a bin, destined for Chicago Forge (the place we sold most of our foundry-able materials).

Reuniting the twins nearly brought the old gentleman to tears.

“Do you know what these are?”, he asked.

“Junk?”, I ventured, shaking my head...

Hellenistic sculpture, at this point was, a closed book to me.

‘Closed, burnt and buried’ book was more the truth.

I was more interested in dinosaurs and depositional environments.

Alas, I digress…

Anyways.

“No, no. Oh, my. No. These, if I’m not mistaken, are the “Winged Victory of Samothrace”, or, at least, creditable copies.”

“So?’, I continued, still incredulous with incredulosity, “Junk?”

“No, no. Oh, my. No.”, he continued. “These, if I am not mistaken, are the stolen Nike statues from the H. Howard Hyde House in Chicago. They are very valuable. You know, the house was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright…”

“So, they’re not just ugly pieces of junk?”.

“No, no. Oh, my. No. These are worth a considerable amount. Perhaps in the hundreds of thousands of dollars…”

“PINKY! Need you over here. Now.”

Pinky strolls over and is informed of the value of these objects d’junque.

I figured Pinky would totally wig. I had no idea where they came from or when they arrived at the yard and I figured Pinky would either (1.) hold them for ransom, or (2.) tell the old guy to piss off, he bought them legally, and they’re his.

Surprisingly, he did neither.

He asked for some background and identification from the elderly gentleman. He told us he was a Professor of Antiquities from a nearby private college in the state just south. He often scrounged around scrap yards, as he was gathering data for his paper on “Garbology” (no kidding: check out http:/itech.fgcu.edu/&/issues/vol2/issue2/garbology.htm,), and was well tied-into the hot, stolen or just missing artwork network.

Pinky was obviously impressed. He told the old gent to take them as he didn’t want to be associated with those lower-class bottom dwellers (surprisingly, he wasn’t referring to lawyers) that would steal art and pawn it for profit.

Truth be told, Pinky didn’t want any run-ins with the feds, as receiving stolen property is a major-league no-no.

So, to this day, somewhere in a well regarded, Northern Illinois University are two dreadful quasi-Hellenistic statues bearing the legend: “Donated by Pinky”.

Very few know the real story.

And now, so you do.

So there.

**Doc Rocknocker** · 09-24-2009, 09:01 AM

Scrapyard Stories, Part the fifth

Where after, we went to the A&W for 15 chili dogs (well, it was Tuesday…) and a brace of strawberry shakes.

Continuing, we sally forth into the venue of what I like to call the “Sneak Dumper”. It happened on a regular basis that some people just didn’t want to be burdened with the 20 km trek out to the local landfill to dispose of their unwanted stuff. We were often greeted with a pile of undesirables left clandestinely in front of the main gate. Usually, it was dross of the most un-saleable nature: lawn clippings, bags of leaves, household trash. We grew accustomed to these leavings. We kept the local dumpster-emptying folks in tall cotton for dealing with these off-casts.

But today was destined to be different. I always arrived (thanks to my Midwestern genes and equally weird work ethic) early. Hell, I only lived 5km distant and my hometown was only one of 50k souls.

So, I wheel into work in “Wily (Coyote”, my 1966 Chevy Van…all right, all right…goddamnit…it was the late ‘70’s for fuck’s sake...) to be greeted by a pile of green, nasty looking filtery-looking things.

I examined the pile and was secretly thrilled to find that they were copper-filters, apparently from the local newsrag which had just changed out their 12th century presses for something more 20th, but decided to not inform the local breakers of the load.

Rance wheels in, in his 1978 AMX; and after the smoke clears, he wanders over wondering what the hell was blocking his parking space.

“What the fuck is this?”, he demanded.

“No idea. It was here when I got here.”, I replied.

“Awww…fuck. More junk. Let’s see what we’ve got here…Holy fucking shit! Jumpin’ Jesus on a Saltine™ cracker! You know what these are?”.

Well, no. Not really.

“They’re copper cleaners.”

I hoped he wouldn’t go all Jack Webb on me at this point.

“Were they copper cleaners kleptomaniacally copped by Clark Clager of Cleveland, as on Carson?”

Rance looks at me like I had just teleported in from Andromeda-12.

“What…?”

Never mind.

“They’re worth a fortune. Pinky’ll freak. We can’t let him know these were just dumped here. Quick. Get your van…”

Oh, I feel so dirty.

But, as you will see; I got over it.

We loaded the clandestine copper cleaners (alright, alright, an adequate amount of alliteration…) into my van and presented them to Pinky and Czack when they finally rolled into work.

“Where the fuck did you find all this shit?” asked Pinky.

“It was, well, um, a donation. One I had to pick up in my own personal vehicle. I thought I’d bring it here to give you first chance at all this copper…unless you don’t want it…”

Pinky shoots me a simultaneous “Are you out of your fucking mind” and “Yes, I want these more than paradise itself and more than those bastards over at Silver Repo (to whom which he will eventually sell this stuff)” look.

“All right, you bastards. How much is this going to cost me?”

We both knew the price of clean #1 copper (damn us, damn us both to hell) and let the record show that we allowed our boss, of whom we both loved more than cold beer and cheese curds, a whopping 2% profit margin.

We were nothing if not magnanimous.

We got thoroughly shitfaced in his honor that night at the Pub and Grub.

Strawberry shakes not included.

OK, then.

On with the show: the “Won’t you please take these; I can’t get rid of them anywhere else” SC.

A perennial favourite.

Seems there’s this type of human flotsam that simply must have money for something, but unlike the keratinous cadre of the previous “But I need (fill in the blank with favourite non-essential), and these are my great aunt’s uncle-in-law’s cousin’s nephew’s friend’s grandfather’s war medals.”

They actually have something of value to sell.

However, it’s usually something absurdly personal, deeply (to some) religious or otherwise more price-worthy as a relic, rather than scrap.

Do you think that they’d listen to us?

Delve deeper.

Deeper.

OK.

That’s deep enough.

“I don’t care what it is, what’s it worth?

The mind boggles.

We got urns, reliquaries, crypts…the stuff of obviously great value to someone sometime, but now, relegated as mere scarp.

They were treated with the utmost respect.

They were treated as the respectful icons that they were.

Yeah, right.

We glommed onto those suckers with both hands.

Hey, chuckles, we’re a business. Into the furnace and “How much for that brass?”

But with the utmost respect…

Anyways, up next is fun for the whole family: The freeloading SC – a k a, ‘the bum in the baler’.

We all show up early, as it’s one of those damned days that the sun is shining, the birds are chirping and it’s not raining…in other words: it’s not a day off.

Bastards.

Anyways.

The day began like any other: the usual hangovers, draggers-in and occasional labourers (we, as ‘permanent’ employees, held the Holy Grail of both a key to the scrapyard and a knowledge of Pinky’s predilection for strawberry A&W shakes) trundled in for yet another fun day of potential death and dismemberment.

Yet another day in paradise.

However, this one was well lit.

Sort of like Czack on any Tuesday.

The local constabulary shows up, in full SWAT regalia (evidently of which they just took delivery and were dying to show off), klaxons blaring and forbidding entry to anyone, even Pinky and Czach, to the “locale of a previous felonious activity”.

“Pinky.”, I chided, “They finally got wise to you.”

Sorry, but my keyboard doesn’t allow for the Yiddish equivalent of: “Fuck you.”

Well, it seems that there was a robbery (at dull, rusty knife-point, if my SWAT-Gibberish-English dictionary is of any repute) at a nearby dry cleaners.

Holy shit. If you’re going to go the whole route of armed robbery (in Wisconsin, where a knife is the exact same as a gun), why pick a dry cleaners?
I have no idea, nor do I care to entertain one.

(Useless hyperbole and inflamed rhetoric aside…)

There was one seriously deranged idiot on the loose.

Even worse: he was holed up in the yard.

Even double worse; he didn’t work for Pinky.

Even triple worse: it wasn’t Czach.

Scary.

The law trundles in and with the enthusiasm of a small town police force suddenly writ large, begin to tear apart the yard searching for this unnamed and totally unknown miscreant who might be hiding in the masses of shorn sheet metal and assorted oddments.

We, being the not-now-paid-maybe-sometime-later employees, both tired of the time wasting and being bereft of a day-off (sans pay), reacted as most others would on an enforced, though uncompensated, holiday: lighting doobies and tapping beers brought out from hiding under ones car seats.

A day off is a day off, after all. What the fuck you gonna do?

Unfortunately, it was not to be.

The local police did a sweep and pronounced it clear.

“Sorry for the inconvenience, but the perp simply isn’t here.”

“Perp? Whoo, boy. Another Horatio wannabee.”

I was oddly CSI-prescient.

Yippee. Another day in the pile.

So, as usual, the day progressed: stack siding, load paper, shift rags.

The standard hilarity and intellectual stimulation.

Back to work.

But then:

“HELP!”

“HOLY FUCK!”

“STOP. I CONFESS!”

Across the yard, we all immediately looked to Jim (whom we knew to be the local soft drug dealer, but allowed because he gave us discount rates…well, not to me, as he didn’t deal in Wild Turkey nor Old Style…no, really…no, REALLY…), who straight away pointed at the baler.

“It’s not me! I haven’t been near it today!”

“HOLY FUCK! STOP! STOP IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT’S HOLY!”

Yeah, I grew up in a staunchly religious community.

The baler was working its way downward, eager to receive its 5 or so meters of paper, glossies or sheet aluminium. Unfortunately, concealed in what he thought to be a perfect hole; was the aforementioned miscreant of this little discourse.

Poetic justice, anyone?

Anyone?

Luckily, we found him out before the baler found its bed. Spies tell me he’s still in Mendota babbling on about the “day the sky fell”.

**Doc Rocknocker** · 09-24-2009, 09:02 AM

Scrapyard Stories, Part Penultimate

Oh, yeah.

On we go again.

There was this character. The one I dub: “The ersatz mad-scientist SC”.

Needed like a root canal, sans aesthetic.

An older gent (of which the scrapyard drew in droves for some reason), with massive amounts of time on his hands, a heart of gold and a brain evidently of osmium. Definitely a SC of the first water as he would, if the tides were right and the phase of the moon was correct, actually purchase something (something obscure, bizarre or otherwise destined for the blast furnace) that he absolutely needed to complete “his secret project”; typically to do with perpetual motion, getting 100 mpg out of your car (Remember the Gas Crisis of the ‘70’s? Happy days.), or some oddment of radio/stereo/hi-fi technology that allowed him to communicate with his home planet.

Unfortunately, and for reasons never explained, the singular piece of scrap yard debris which had taken him weeks to find, just “wasn’t right” for his project, and could he return it for a refund?

We seldom, if ever, gave receipts…paper trail being as horrible as ever and all that, especially with Czach operating just one step ahead of local conficscatory laws…refunds ranked right up there with “a lightly grilled weasel with fries” and vanilla shakes at noontime for Pinky and company.

So, we had to tell our friend that “you bought it, it’s yours”, and “I don’t run the damn yard, and Pinky says ‘Go to hell’”.

Pinky was a man of few words; well chosen and often four-letter.

Cue the Orchestra Whinging. Cue harp music. Cue plaints, pleas and promises.

“I know I saw what I needed in the yard last week. (“Why the fuck didn’t you buy that then?”) and I if I can just exchange this…”

Cue 45 minutes of my life wasted, never to return.

I was powerless to help him. Even more than powerless, I was apathetic, bored and really didn’t give the tiniest moose shit about his predicament.

Nor was anyone else in the yard for that matter.

Dejectedly, he’d leave, vowing never to return. (“Rant, rail, feeble epitaphs, resignation, oh…what the fuck…never mind…”)

Next Monday? He’d be there, shiny as a new penny, pert as a newly erect dick, forgetting everything that had transpired and champing at the bit to delve into the yard to see what new treasures he could unearth.

Please, take a hammer to me if I ever get this dilapidated.

Did I mention that we had hammers?

Hell, we had a lot of hammers.

Ahem.

Next on the hit parade are our old friends, the local constabulary. Yep, Gomer, Goober and that group often made the rounds to our locale to see what was up, what, if anything, was going on and if Pinky had actually slipped up and somehow got a hold of the brace of brass lion sculptures that somehow disappeared from in front of the local Town Hall.

As I noted before, we lived in a “Car-Town” (no to be confused with someplace exciting like a “Cow-Town”), where a certain lamentable, and now extinct, breed of automobile called home.

Think of a small Detroit-type town; without the charm, but all of the rust.

Well, this particular company, which shall henceforth go by the euphemistic initials of “AMC”, would regularly charge their Research & Development groups with coming up with one form or another of internally-combusted wheeled conveyance that would capture America’s hearts, interest, and, most importantly, their pocketbooks.

Viz: “the Hornet”.

“The Rebel”.

“The Ambassador”.

“The Javelin”.

“The Pregnant Roller Skate”…ack, err.. “The Pacer”.

And these were the models that actually made it into production.

Suffice to say, there were many, many failed attempts at designing the next Mustang or Corvette. All of these went, after many millions of dollars poured into R&D, concepts, modelling, and prototypes; straight into the dumpster.

That’s where we came in.

We joyfully received, on a rather regular basis, the off-casts of designs which would make Homer Simpson’s vehicular creation in “Oh, Brother. Where Art Thou?” look like a Lamborghini Cheetah.

We gingerly, and with utmost respect, took in the tools, dies, forms and sheet metal for these wayward orphans of the Autobahn and gleefully torched, baled and flattened them for their trip to one or another blast furnace.

Hey. We had feelings.

Particularly every other week, on Friday, around 5:00 pm.

Y’know. Payday.

That is, until one load of prototypical material was delivered to us, by mistake.

Instead of going to the Motorcity (where the final tooling and such-and-so-forth was done), this particular load consisted of a model actually destined for production.

So? The auto manufacturer fucks up and sends the prototype to the scrap yard. What will one do?

Call the yard?

Call Detroit?

Call the local fuzz and hope that they can both identify the errant prototype and rescue it from an ignominious doom?

Let’s just see…

Sirens wailing and lights flashing, fully 2/3’rd s of the local police force descend upon the scrap yard.

“Hut, hut, hut, hut, hut…”

Oh, yeah. Yet another day in paradise.

Seeing as how, at that time, they local auto concern employed approximately 80% of the city’s workforce; such possible faux pas’ were held in much the same esteem as Charles Manson on work release in a Chicago Cutlery shop.

They cordoned off the yard, shut everything down and requested, nay, demanded, a list of each and every and all customers in the last fortnight.
Recall what I said earlier about paper trails?

Seldom closer than the Iditarod did a trail ever grow colder.

Seems like Stav and myself had just that morning torched, baled and consigned to Chicago Northwestern freight services a load of tools, dies and sheet metal forms that were sort of, kind of, well, strangely resembled, that is to say, exactly fit the description of, those items for which they were in hot pursuit.

Sorry, folks. But the 1977 AMC Sportabout Excel was stillborn at a scrap yard in Southeastern Wisconsin due to a ridiculous work ethic, diligent workmanship and a desire to get through yet another week and see what the weekend had to offer.

A few years later, the company ultimately went tits-up.

I still feel oddly, uneasily, and somewhat tangentially, responsible.

Reading back, I see this is the space for SC #13.

There is no SC #13.

So there.

Continuing on, yet again, in the vein of automotive experimentation and the vast and varied metal workings necessary, we sally forth to the venue of the myriad machine shops that littered the local landscape in the late ‘70’s, doing the odd job of prototyping, manufacturing and hand tooling the one-offs and other oddments that infest a town with one major employer; upon whom all others are somehow and somewhat dependant.

That is: (“i.e”, for you Latin fans out there) the local machine shop.

Neighbourhood, just-one-step-up-from-the-basement enterprises that all had a singular specialty.

Copper castings? Check. See Bill at #94 East.

Chrome-moly plating? “Chuck’s Chrome-n-such” on West 50 (you think I’m making this up? Ha!)

Beryllium machining? Uke’s machine shop. Just look for the albinos milling about out front (beryllium dust is particularly toxic and demelanizing, but remember folks, this was the ‘70’s).

And so on and so forth.

And us? We readily took in all the flotsam and jetsam of these folks and turned them into filthy lucre.

It was not unusual for us to receive cast iron, cast copper, tin, lead, steel, stainless, aluminium, neptunium and gadolinium (well, OK, very little gadolinium) parts of the most exotic and bizarre design. Finely tuned, handsomely honed, intricately designed and all destined for the scrap heap.

Kind of sad if one was to reflect on that sort of thing. I looked no further than how much it would impact my biweekly check.

Yeah, I was (am/are) a greedy bastard.

Well, we received one week a healthy assortment of the aforementioned and Pinky and Czach were forced to part with the better part of 1,000 fat, 1970’s-grade US dollars. Oh, they were happy to get the off-casts, but were keenly unhappy about having to pay anything for them. All part of business, but the part of business for which P&C never really much cared.

So, off they went. Into the yard, into the bins and into the various bales to be shipped south to be returned as pristine steel, stainless, copper and cadmium-doped beryllium-laden silicon semiconductors…

Right.

Except certain of these pieces were indeed unique and sold without authorization.

**Doc Rocknocker** · 09-24-2009, 09:03 AM

Scrapyard Stories, Part The End

Seems that an employee of one of the machine shops was given the gate (i.e, (see previous – Ed.) fired) and snuck out a load of precision parts machined for a particular local car company.

Pinky had just purchased them, as he is wont, that morning.

As were our wont, and want of a pay check, they were bundled into 1,000 kg bales and currently residing in our capacious warehouse.

We spent some 3 days tearing through bales looking for these machined parts. Searched high. Searched low. Never did find them.

Although we did later get a load of stainless tubing from yet another local machine shop. Seems the stainless steel of which they had recently taken delivery had too high a beryllium content and was unmachinable…

Leading, dear gentle, and perhaps masochistic, reader, to this final entry in Scrapyard Stories; about my leaving Pinky and Czack for greener (and as it would prove, snowier, colder and considerably icier) venues and the SC who thinks he can outwit a pair of very nasty Rottweilers named Adolph and Rommel.

Summer, as all good seasons eventually do, grudgingly hunched its collective humid shoulders and slid gracelessly into Autumn.

Autumn, when school restarted; where I could forgo the ritual waking at 0530 (now I was able to sleep-in until the decadent hour of 0600 to attend a particularly onerous 0700 Physical Chemistry class) and go somewhere where I withstood the gruelling possibly of expiring from a paper cut rather than a full-limb dismemberment.

But first, I had to clock out on my last day at the Scrapyard.

Figuring this was something of a bellwether day, I showed up early.

Why? Damned if I know.

I was sitting in my van (who shall remain nameless, I took enough abuse earlier…), having a coffee when Stav, Paul, Mike, Rance and the rest of the crowd rolls in.

I was the only one going to college and these characters, salt of the earth, never let me forget it.

I loved these guys like brothers.

From a large, dysfunctional family.

“Well, College-boy, time for work”.

“Yeah, let’s go, Poindexter”.

I subtly remind them who has the blaster’s permit and who has the keys to the explosives locker.

“Be careful when you start your cars tonight…”

Walk up to the gate, and whip out the key when we find a length of #40 circle-weld cadmium-clad chain and a new Yale padlock where one never existed before.

“What the fuck! Did they finally catch Pinky?”

“Probably Czack. Doubtless locked himself in the office again (a none-to-unusual happenstance, noting his predilection for a particular brownish ethanol molecule).”

Then there arose, with a fume and a clatter, a notoriously noxious noise.

What was the matter?

“Oh, shit. Some idiot crossed Adolph and Rommel.”

Adolph and Rommel were, ironically, Pinky and Czach’s early warning system (they’re Jewish, expatriates of a concentration camp…you work out the irony) . A brace of teeth, sinew and bad temper all rolled into 100kg (each) of nasty Rottweiler.

“Meaner than a Junkyard Dog”? Jim Croce never met Adolph and Rommel.

Pinky and Czach weren’t due for another 45 or so minutes, so I called the local cops and asked what the hell was happening.

“Well, we got a call that the dogs were raising a ruckus; but with it being a weekend, we didn’t want to go in. We didn’t think that Pinky’d mind, so we just chained off the yard and waited until Monday.”

“Yeah. Well, it’s Monday. It’s early and we want to got to work (that is, get paid). So send down someone and open the damned gate.”

“Nah. You guys are there. Go ahead and open the gate. We’ll send someone down in a half hour or so.”

Theodore Kaczynski meet the scrapyard guys.

Guys, Ted Kaczynski.

So, Mike goes off to his car and brings back a bolt cutter (“Never know when one of these might come in handy.”), and cuts the chain.

Rommel and Adolph hit the ground at a flat gallop and damn near cream Stav and Paul. If slobbering and licking were fatal, I’d be calling the coroner. These dogs are the meanest, nastiest, most accursedly horrific beasts this side of a Hammer Horror flick.

If they don’t know you.

If they do, they’re 220 pounds of big, slobbery, moon-eyed puppy.

They love us (we fed them a constant supply of Momma burgers) and hate, with the burning passion of a thousand supernovae, intruders.

“Dolph! Rom! Where are they?”

“Rowf.”

“Bark.”

And associated slathering dog noises.

Up on the pile of aluminium siding and cast-off screens, sits an absolutely terrified, pale, petrified, although none-too-bright, idiot.

Cretin.

Schmuck.

<Aw, hell, I’ve run out of adjectives. You fill in the blanks…>

“What the flying Philadelphia French-fried fuck are you doing up there?” inquires Mark, in his inimitable tone.

“Budda…budda…dogs…budda…gonna eat me….budda…”

“Yeah. Would serve you right, asshole. Marty, go get him.”

“What. On my last day? Fuck that. No, wait one. Let me get to the explosives locker…”

Killjoys. Ruin a guy’s fun on his last day and all…

Pinky and Czack roll in, about 2 hours late and demand to know what the hell is going on.

<short discourse into the last hour or so>

“Well, it’s a cop matter. It’s late, almost noon. Go to A&W and get us a couple of strawberry shakes…”

“…and chili dogs…?”, suggests Stav through his cheesy walrus moustache and unbelievably evil grin.

An hour and a half later, the cops finally arrive. They are greeted by the scene of 10 large, hirsute, laughing characters sitting around an outsized pile of scrap metal, drinking A&W root beers (and bourbon…a truly Satanic combination if there ever was), tossing chili dogs to a pair of slavering Rottweilers who are coming ever closer to some retards feet who just so happens to be clinging to the peak of the aforementioned pile of scrap aluminium siding.

Envoi: I didn’t escape unscathed. Remember my “ever so cool Red Adair brushed aluminium” hardhat? The last I saw of it, it was neatly baled into a 1,000 kg cube of scrap siding.

It read: “AmRty”.

I will never, never, ever forgive those bastards.

**Fire_on_High** · 09-24-2009, 11:30 AM

Holy shit...epic!

**hobbitt97** · 09-24-2009, 12:55 PM

reminds me...

This reminds me a little bit of Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories and other disasters by Jean Shepherd. If this could be cleaned up a bit (editied) it might qualify as a saleable short story. Great Reading!!!!!

**Lala** · 09-24-2009, 02:39 PM

Epic!

This was hilarious and very well-written.

**prb** · 09-24-2009, 02:58 PM

I haven't read this yet, it looks like you've written a novel about sucky customers :P but I'll be reading it later

**Salted Grump** · 09-24-2009, 03:14 PM

I nearly Died Laughing. Totally, and Utterly EPIC in every way, Shape and form.

**bunnyboy** · 09-24-2009, 04:19 PM

words...fail..me...

I can die happy now.

That was so epic it was like... if Metal and Metal bred and had Metal Babies that were like clones of Abe Lincoln.

Also after reading about the Family Garoo...

WRITE A BOOK.

**IvorTangrean** · 09-24-2009, 04:45 PM

Great job, a truly epic tale

**StanFlouride** · 09-24-2009, 07:08 PM

A brilliantly written tale, I too suggest that you edit it and submit it for publication.

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Scrapyard Stories (WARNING: quite long with some icky parts (clearly pre-marked))

Scrapyard Stories (WARNING: quite long with some icky parts (clearly pre-marked))

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