So this old guy stops by my shop with some great stories about hacking up 32-34 Fords

An old timer I knew told me that back in the 50s he took a barge of old cars out in Nanaimo harbor with his dad who ran a tugboat. Early cars, mostly Model Ts or open cars that had been replaced by post war stuff. He said the ones that didn't run, they would roll off the barge into the ocean, and the ones that ran, they had fun sticking them in gear and watching them drive off the barge. Apparently they dumped hundreds of cars there.

 

I did not see this thread originally but my grandfather Barney Pollard did have to give up a bunch of s**** and all of the tires on the cars he had collected. When my grandfather started collecting cars in 1938 it was not just to hoard or whatever term one wants to use. He had a measure of disgust that more attention was not being made to preserve the history of the cars. He had worked in the automotive plants prior to and during WW1 and was always a car nut. Collecting one led to another and before he knew it he had a few hundred.

He had collected these prior to the war but when the war came along the government had broad powers to take property for the public good-rightfully so when you look at the big picture. My grandfather also ended up opening a machine shop to make parts for the war effort and not for any profit-he lost money. Everyone had to do their part.

When the government discovered his car collection they wanted it for s****. They wanted all of the rubber tires which he agreed to give them. As my grandfather related it cost him maybe $2 to $5 (that might be a stretch-but nevertheless it was a bit of work) to remove the tires as they were petrified and some were very hard to get to, due to the lack of space and some in buildings. My grandfather said the rubber from each car may be worth 50 cents but it cost him dollars to remove them but such was the price to be paid for the war effort.

As to the cars he went to Washington several times in an attempt to work out a solution with the government. My grandfather even before the agreements went all over the area and recovered s**** iron and aluminum paying for much of it. I remember seeing pictures of large piles on the rented railroad property next door when I was a kid. He said many people were taking the small items but he would try and find the big stuff and cut it up and then pile it high on his property (and rental property next door) before it could be moved to the Rouge plant for recycling. He had to use his own workers to cut up the large iron and steel and aluminum and deliver it with his trucks back to his property and then later to the Rouge-not an easy task but a possible solution to save some of his cars. His agreement with Washington was to deliver a certain amount of s****, the tires of course and then one car a week to be delivered to the Ford Rouge. Ford and my grandfather did not get along that well as Ford tried to short my grandfather on payment for laying the roadbeds (cinder road beds for the hundreds of miles of railroad) around the Rouge complex. That is another story but long story short, my grandfather had so many model Ts and he took only Model Ts to Ford. Eventually my grandfather quit taking cars and just continued with general s**** and Ford knowing there would be just more Model Ts making the trek kept quiet on the cars and just took the s****.-Jim

 

Whenever I read someone recalling a story, I automatically try to relate items in the story to facts that I know as truth. If those items align with the truth as I know it, the story has some credibility. If they don't, the story is just that, a story. Two to five dollars a tire in labor to remove? In the early forties, 50 cents an hour was pretty good wages. Four hours minimum to remove a tire?

YGTBSM

Bill

 

$2 to $5 TOTAL for it ALL

 

If you would simply google Barney Pollard you may find out that he stored hundreds of cars on their rear bumpers in buildings to save space. To remove the tires when they were packed in buildings (some not all as at that time he was in the process of packing them away in buildings) like sardines is not an easy task-harder yet when the tires were rock hard. Also where did I say $2 to $5 per tire? Maybe you should pay more attention when you read. And 50 cents an hour was not a good wage, decent maybe in your neck of the woods but my grandfather only wishes he could have paid his truck drivers and equipment operators and workers that amount. It more than likely took more than a few minutes and probably did cost $2 per car (maybe some may have taken more effort if standing on end in a building with limited space and working around those hanging cars was dangerous- I worked around them as a kid and you had to be careful).The point I was making and I qualified it ("that might be a stretch") was it was more work than the tires themselves were worth as recycled. Believe what you may.-Jim

 

Love the info jim, people were just doing what they had to do. I worked at a pretty well known(locally) salvage yard/new used auto parts yard a couple of years ago. Became pretty good buds with the owner(he's 73).he found out i was gearhead, and loved to bug me about all the old hot rod and muscle cars they parted out and s****ed. I told him all those old ford ch***is go for good money now. He said"yeah we always liked em too, cause you could cut the rails in the middle before the kickups and the made good n straight cross braces to bolt the wood to for flat bed trucks. We cut up as many as we could get" then he would just grin, as i put my head in my hands.

HE'S THE GUY THAT WOULD TELL ME "GETTIN OLD AINT FOR PUSSIES".

 

An interesting read!

 

The stuff that went for s**** ranged from house hold bacon grease to cotton/clothes
as well as to cars of all sorts
like this...

Frank Yount's Duesenberg on the scales for a s****-metal drive during World War II






.

 

Had a good friend who was a teenager during the War drive for s**** metal. He told me how he used to sneak over the fence at the s**** pile and "save" historical things he couldn't stand to see s****ped. He was never able to save anything big, so cars were out, but he saved a number of neat car parts and several nice old antique guns!

 

Jim, the point is, if the person relating a story will "stretch" a point that is easily verified, why should I believe the parts that cannot be verified? And you admit he probably "stretched" that point. It seems readily apparent your Grandfather harbored hard feelings, how much did they influence what he did at the time and more importantly, the story as told years later?

I grew up in the Forties and Fifties, heard bunches about s**** drives, but never anything about confi****ion. I will admit that some arm twisting may have been done, but until someone do***ents the confi****ion of s****, I say B.S. As they say, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."

Bill

 

Thanks for the story Jim. It clarifies a lot of the legend about your gramps. I always considered him a local hero of antique cars. Vision like that is rare and something to be respected. I saw Barney (jr?) this summer about the museum aquisition of the Murphy Packard. I always love to hear his recalls of those days and he indicated that the ol 12 would go 83MPH. Said he drove it back and forth to high school and had the hood ornament he bought when he was a teenager. Still looks brand new. Again, thanks for the story.


Jocko

 

Bill, good job you finally were able with your logic to unearth that all of these "stories" about the Barney Pollard and his battles with Washington was nothing but a bunch of BS. During that time when all of this was occurring my grandfather was an active member of a number of both local and national car clubs including the VMCCA. A number of these friends and fellow VMCCA members watched what my grandfather was doing to preserve his collection as they were collectors as well. How astute you are that he was able to hoodwink such notable fellow collectors as Austin Clark, Peter Helck, Gerry Fauth, the singer Jimmy Melton, and then of course his very good friend Charles Chayne Chief Engineer at Buick. They must have been complete idiots to buy into the ruse my grandfather was perpetrating. Once again good job and oh by the way as an attorney I can tell you know little of anything about confi****ion during war time.

Good job on calling out this scam-Jim

 

Jimdillion, don't let it get to you my friend. It was a gut wrenching time in history and a perfect example is the picture of a Duesenberg being s****ped. The war had precedence, but it must have been very hard for your grandfather to go through all that mess trying to save the cars he loved.
Thanks for coming on and clarifying it for us.
I will gladly except your explanation as there is no one more qualified than you to tell the story.

 

I remember as a kid there was a field near here full of old 30s cars, I asked an uncle about getting one for a hot rod (this would have been mid 1970s) I was told back then that the owner of the cars refused to sell them to the Govt during WWII for the s**** drive, so the feds put a lien on all the cars preventing him from selling anything in the lot. I wondered if it was true, sounds like it might have been. I used to p*** them everyday. Years later the field caught fire, and the cars burned, I was told that you could hear the gas tanks exploding from some distance. Now its a parking lot....