Junk Yard Shots

I went to the auto junk yard last week with Fred, and until I got in trouble for shooting photographs (this was not posted, but who would anticipate it?) it was an interesting departure from the ordinary. By 'ordinary' I mean my 'ordinary' because Fred ordinarily comes here often. In fact, he visits all the local junkyards frequently for parts. The idea is this: you find an undamaged part, a wire, or a tire on a junker that works in your vehicle and you buy it for a fraction of the cost of a new one. The vehicles stay around the lot for around 30 days depending on whether new stock is coming in and they have to make room.Bring your tools, because you'll have to remove it yourself. We were in search of a tire for Fred's minivan and so lugged around a jack and a wrench, and other tools I cannot name. (Get it: lugged around?) I happily shot my photos until a guy in a big tractor-looking thing with a car-scooper in front told me no photos were allowed and watched us walk to the van and place the camera safely inside. No photos, fine, but really what horrible misdeeds could I commit? Here are some of those verboten photos carefully chosen so as to not reveal which lot we were at.

Since we were looking for minivan tires, we were mostly in the van/pick-up/SUV department:

Buddy, your back fell off.


Can you find the part you need in there? This spaghetti looks more complicated than usual to me.

This is what's under your bumpers, y'all:

The personal items strewn about was spooky to me. Why? Unless I were on a road trip somewhere and got into a bad wreck, there wouldn't be many personal items other than CDs in my car, and I would retrieve them promptly. Unless... There was one van with a whole lot of women's clothes in it and many brochures on driving under the influence.

While guys pulling parts from these junkers treat the vehicles with some respect (propping up the thing with a found object after removing a wheel for instance), the personal objects are thrown about all over. I suppose customers are hoping to find some treasure in there, but it just added to the gloominess of the place to me.