Art & Inspiration Sometimes I hate being a car part scavenger

I've been looking at this banjo rearend and wishbone with wire wheels sitting in someones yard for the last few months. The setup looks like it's been inside for most of its life, very clean and just what I've been looking for. Everytime I've gone over there no one has been home. Today, however, I got my lucky break finally.

As I pulled up to the house I saw a man coming out the door. Success!! I walked up to him and said, "Excuse me, but do you live here?"

He replied, "Yes, can I help you?"

"Well, I don't mean to bother you, but I wanted to ask about the axle laying out there by the garage in the yard, would you possibly be interested in selling it?", I asked, a big smile on my face. Surely this would soften the fellow up.

"No, sorry, it's not for sale, we're saving it for a project", he replied.

Awesome, a car guy, maybe even a new friend (of sorts)!! "What kind of project, if you don't mind me asking?", I inquired politely.

"Oh, well, we're going to build a flowerbed and use it like a trellis."

...
...
I mumbled "Okay, well, thanks", turned away, climbed in my van, and slowly drove away...

 

was your mouth hanging open? cause mine was after i read your story.

sorry dude, that sucks.

 

You should go back and offer to buy him a real garden trellis and trade it for the rear.

 

I suppose I should have mentioned that as I climbed into my van, he walked over and got into his Toyota Prius...

...and no, none of this is bullshit, it really went down just. like. that.

 

Trade him some late model axle, and throw in a few bucks for flowers.

 

I've heard of worse, such as car bodies being used in gardens...

 

just steal it, when no ones lookin!!!!!

 

ahhh, no.

 

You know how you can kinda get the feeling about what people are like? I got the feeling he was proud of it, like the wire wheels would somehow lend their yard character...whatever.

I guess the reason I wrote this is because it just felt so twilight zonish, like Rod Serling was going to be leaning against my van with a cigarette hanging from his mouth, the smoke lazily drifting away...

"He thought it was an innocent encounter, a seemingly harmless inquiry about what appeared to be an abandoned axle. Little did he know that he was entering "The Twilight Zone".

...or something like that.

 

Thats is one heck of a sceen right there.
kinda sucks

 

I would have offered to clean out all that nasty carcinogenic substance inside the housing and strip the paint so the lead based pigments contained in it don't contaminate his organic sheep shit garden soil and offer to carefully dispose of the asbestos brake linings while I were at it. The tyres of course contain ( horror of horrors) CARBON! and we know what that does to the environment as it slowly kills us off. but to save his garden from further cancer causing substances and probable trouble from your local EPA nazi's you could have offered to swap something similar which already has been decontaminated in line with bio hazard guidelines as laid own by the united nations comittee on environmental degradation and EU Brussles convention on vehicle scrap disposal ,plus the Kyoto protocols on the environment but the USA has refused to aknowledge that ....yet.

Just an idea,

 

I passed out twice while trying to read this...

 

"We're gonna plant tulips in a '32 grill next. Bring your hot rod buddies over, so I can fry 'em."


Sounds like you ran into a for real nightmare. Hope you find another rear soon. That had to call for a brew or two. I know I need one after reading that.

 

Sounds familiar.. Up North of where Im at.. a Guy had a huge pie shaped lot full of 40s and 50s cars.. he had no interest in selling any.. he was just waiting for the right moment to get all the cars moved off his land by crane then train to be melted to make tanks..

His wife was praising while he was condeming.. ( it was one of those wierd days )
Needless to say.. I never did go back to see if they were still there or not..

The reason I stopped , I needed all the front sheet metal for a Old 54 Ford Victoria I owned.. he had plenty.. just not for distribution....

And yes,, we have those sorts of people too...

 

i would stop by again and ask ... and maybe make an offer he cant refuse ...

 

Just to balance things out...I was at an older guys shed one time while my friend was getting some apples from him. He had a small trailer with a couple '35 wires on it. i told him if he got rid of the trailer i wanted to buy the wheels. He said "You want some of those wheels?" Of course i said yes, he took me into an huge barn and showed me a nice set of 4 '35 wires with the caps still on then. Still had some green paint on them too. Got them for $100

 

Sound like the folks in the small towns of southern GA.

 

i have two thoughts, one is hes a car guy and knows the rear is crap and just wants some auto yard art, two if hes not a car guy why would he want an old car part in his front yard, i bet the rear is shot. i drive a smart car all the time as its my gf's but i have lots of rusty yard art not for sale..lol

 

Ya know...back in the 1920's, the guys doing up the old 1800's Covered wagons went thru the same shit.
Wooden wheels in every flower garden...while your Buckboard was up on blocks!

Trellis. It's always a frickin' Trellis....

 

I've seen those same wheels at trustee auctions going for around $200 which is about 20 times what they cost new in 1860,and thats after being some sort of hokey lawn art for at least 60 years... bloody gardners need shooting,send some of the HAMBers who claim to want to do violence to others all the time to kill them ..

 

Awright here is what ya do-go to The Home Depot, buy a trellis and approach the mouth breather and say to him "HEY! This is new! And it won'thurt your flowerzz.".

 

I've been knocking on doors for decades, I thought I had seen and heard it all, but for some reason this guy just got to me today. I think it was the pure innocence of the answer that threw me off, like it was absolutely natural to intentionally destroy something that someone else held value in.

I mean, seriously, if you had something like that and someone approached you offering to buy it, wouldn't you at least be a LITTLE curious how much they thought it was worth? And trust me, nothing about the place even suggested SLIGHTLY that this was a car guy, it just wasn't there. I know some car guys keep a clean place, but this was different, this dude was a greener, from the Prius to the brand new Carrhart jacket with a freshly pressed collar...

 

Nope, it was in his eyes, dude was serious as could be, I've done this enough, I can tell.

There's a really, REALLY small chance he was screwin' with me, but I don't think so...

 

Check the local Zoning Laws and see if having that crap in a yard is legal. How long will it take standing on end to fill with water and destroy all the innards?

 

These things happen. About 10-12 years ago I had an antique shop that specialized in a lot of "guy stuff". I had accumulated 30-40 cool old wheels from bicycles, wheels from the 1880's to the late '20's. Most were steel, a few wood. Some were not too high, but the old wheels for high wheel bikes were pricey. A lady came in and told me she collected wheels as a hobby, and mine were great. She bought them all, never haggled on the price. She showed me pics of wheels in her house, in her barn, etc. As she left in her shiney new truck I asked her where she planned on putting these. "In the flower garden for trellis's and borders" was her reply. I told her they were better wheels than almost everything in her pics, but she said the ones she bought from me suited the garden better. She refused my offer to buy them back. Later that summer I bought a Schwinn Red Phantom that a lady had been using as a trellis. It wasn't too bad, I just replaced the rusted S-2 rims with some I had laying around and it was a decent bike. Thank all those Country Living type magazines the ladies believe in so much.

 

My Carhart coveralls are 15 years old-and they look like it. I've got a 4' iron wheel off a grain drill as a trellis in my yard. The rest of it I made into a magazine rack because the end plates are really cool old embossed iron. I drive a Prius because I like the safety features over my old '92 car and I don't like buying gas for my 40 mile commute. My hot rod Model A sits in an auto shed converted form an 110 year old steam powered electricity generator building that sits on my farm

Be careful how you classify folks. You can be green and mean at the same time.

Sorry, you lost the rear end,Electrodude, but you gotta keep trying,right?

 

didja wave GREEN CASH? $100 can change minds quickly

 

YUPPIE REVENGE!!!!! sorry to hear that. I've always found that if I miss out on something like that(good parts) something even better and sometimes cheaper always comes along. It may take awhile sometimes but it happens. later shawn

 

I hear ya, I've met plenty of people just like you too, very cool folks taking whatever they have laying around and making something good out of it, but not having a junk pile around the house, I get it. I also wouldn't mind the convenience and safety of a hybrid to travel on the Hellway, I mean the "I-5 Corridor of Death".

Like I said before, this just felt different, but then again, it could be completely normal, I'm not really sure I could tell the difference at this point...

 

Nah, I try to respect the law and those that enforce it, but I'm not going out of my way to call their attention on someone else, it just doesn't seem right, I mean, the guys not making meth in his bathtub or anything like that, it's just a car part. A really nice car part, but still just a car part.