Salvation Yard

Some call them junk yards or salvage yards--to me they are so much more. We had one right across the road from our farm house, an old in-ground silo that would be filled w/trash and burned annually. One of my best childhood activities was to rummage around in the trash and make treasure of it. I did not need toys, for I was able to recycle an old steering wheel into a ship's wheel; reuse an abandoned dryer as a space shuttle; rethink the utility of everything from jam jars to tin cans. My dogs and I also hunted there, scaring out mice, rats, ground squirrels, rabbits and badgers...once even a skunk.

I think the junk yard enhanced my young imagination more than television, film or books.

I remember in high school, while we were all grappling for career direction, I thought I had found mine: to operate a salvage yard! I was a motorhead, and once I went Beyond the Fence with a worker at a salvage yard to hunt for hubcaps or something. It was Dodge City, 1977. I was thrilled to ride with him in a vehicle they had thrown together from junked cars. It had no doors, no glass. The seats did not match. He had ink pens stuck in the dashboard (his pen holder) and an open container in what was once an ash tray. It was more like a dune buggy than a car, and it made a lasting impression on me. All I ever wanted was to rummage around in a junk yard, finding new use for old stuff...

...but the world is cruel to a teenager, and I eventually had to let that dream go.

Well, sort of. I continue to cling to trash. We bought a place with a substantial junk pile in back (well hidden behind a grove of trees, far from the house, behind a barbed wire fence)...and I regularly have to defend its value. I can find something from what others see as nothing--any time! They see a stack of junk tires, I see a planter for potatoes. They see scrap tin, I see sheeting for a goat shelter.

Some would claim I have even more than this in common with Oscar the Grouch.