When things go wrong at the scrap yard

Seems the Lord looks out for fools, drunks and children. I don't drink and I'm not back into diapers yet, but........

Crawled up under the front fender of a 57 Chevy in the yard to work for something I needed. Even though I was working in very cramped conditions, I wasn't worried about the car coming down on me. The frame was right by my ear and I heard something skittering up along my face. Turned to see a big fuzzy brown spider and couldn't even get my hands up to my face. Tried to blow it out like a candle, but it held on and I figured it to jump on my face next. Was primed to pull the adrenalin needed to stand up and flip the Chevy over, but the spider just farted and walked away. Probably heard my heart pounding and figured something big was stepping up. Took a deep breath and went back to work.

 

only pull it on people I know, I don't bother them in the house, they eat the bugs and stay near the ceilings.

 

These are NOTHING ...



Try a junkyard full of these ...



At my favorite junk yard ... about 25 miles from my home ... these are COMMON.



I saw a snake skin one day last week with 19 rattlers on it

He has anywhere from 7 thousand to 10 thousand cars ... on hand at any time, depending on the price of scrap. Right now, scrap is down a little so he is FULL.

Go here to see the kind of stuff he has and WHY it is worth the time and efforet ... RATTLESNAKES and all

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=116005&showall=1


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I've run into some of those around here, they killed one nearly that big at work a couple of years ago. was in the paint shop, someone went and got their gun and shot it, I think it's a belt or boots now.

 

That is the BIGGEST rattler I've ever seen! Sure am glad I don't live anywhere near that yard! Who needs watch dogs with something like that hangin out!!

 

I went to leave a yard I'd only been in a couple times before & found out everyone had gone for the day & I was locked in. Sounds like a scavengers dream until I started noticing these monster dog turds where ever I went. Thats when I started planning my moves carefully-with an escape route in mind. I'm not much of a climber, but I did get over that six foot fence & never did see a dog!

 

Not so much as a salvage yard story as it is funny. My buddy and I found this old 54 5 window 1 ton truck. We bought it and flat towed it about 35 miles. When my buddy jumped out of the cab and came walking towards me I saw this cloud of hornets coming out of the cab and heading towards him. I yelled, he heard them anyway and was making a dead run by then for the shop. We shut in and waited.

As we were peering out the door towards the truck, he mentioned that he was severely allergic to those things and if he got stung once it would probably kill him.

Later that day we figured out that the seat he had been sitting on the whole trip was a nest.

Yikes!

 

Ever hear that Jim Stafford song "I don't like spiders and snakes, but I've got what it takes............to love you"? That's my theme song...........can't stand either one.

Frank

 

Thanx for all the replies ppl, hope to read more...another one that happened to myself in the yard was when I was cutting up a badly rotten 53 Pontiac 4 door, my son who was always with me at work on the weekends kept grabbing my shoulder saying " dad, dad dad dad " so I finaly said and ya I was yelling " What what what!!!! " and he replied your cutting through your torch hoses with your torch!!!! I never made him say Dad more than once again!!!

 

When I was in school many years ago, my driver was a '56 Ford Customline Vic HT with a dead temp gauge. One sunny day while I was riding around with all the windows down, I stopped at one of the auto wrecking yards to look for a replacement gauge. The yard had several large "Danger - Guard Dogs On Duty" signs posted. I had just stepped out of the car with the door wide open when two king-sized German Shepards came flying around the corner directly at me. I can't move fast enough to get back in the car and the windows are down anyway, so I'm thinking "Oh shit ... I'm lunch!" Both dogs ran by me and jumped in my car, ready for a ride. I had to get one of the yard guys to come and get them out.

 

I pulled a complete wiring harness with a buddy for his car at my families yard. I gathered my tools and picked up the harness.........and it moved. Not wanting to be the only one scarred shitless I called my buddy over to get "his" harness. Apparently the snake(who had been coiled in the harness) had moved on but he caught site of him eye level on the roof. He did a 180 and bolted full speed.......directly into a tree. Out cold. Broken nose. Bark imprint for nearly a week.
To this day we call him "tree".

 

This one time....oh wait I forgot people in Orange County dont like junk yards anywhere near there fancy houses so I guess we dont have any. Bummer.

 

I High school we would go parts hunting at the local scrap yard. Most of the time we just smoked doobies and wandered around. Our favorate yard was an older one packed with all sorts of wacky stuff to look at. We seemed to end up in the far back hanging out in the old schol busses. All fun and games till ya loose track of time and get locked in the yard when they close. The place is real creepy when yer 16 wacked out on doobies in the dark surrounded but mangled cars.

 

They actually have a sign that states

PLEASE ...
Do not feed the snakes ...

 

worked my first yard at about 15 - this was about 1972 and already in May the grass was taller than the cars...just woking a sicle - I took the top of off a in ground bubble bee hive...one got me on the cheek...had big lips for a week....

 

I set myself on fire cutting the front clip off of a pickup truck. Two people were waching (supposed to be helping). I must have been on fire for a while without knowing it, because I had a hard time getting my pants put out.
I was wondering why it was so hot when I had the torch pointed away from me.

The only thing those two knuckle heads has to say was," Hehehehe, man, I knew you were gona do that, hehehehe".

 

A yard i would get parts at had guard dogs crossed with blue heelers. they would bite your pant leg above your heel and pull when you were trying to get a part off a car . Kind of distracting.

 

and lately...was pulling a large y block 312 four barrel intake from an old school bus sraight off the farm...thought that valley pan had a strange color to it...until I saw it move...told the yard guys about it and said I'd be back as I had already removed alot of stuff....a week later I got it...and still have it....but not the rat snake...

 

Last year my buddy & I were removing something from & car & there were two guys near us doing the same. There was absolutely nobody else around. All of the sudden, there was an explosion, about as loud as an cherry bomb. I turned around & saw some pice of junk fly into the air about 50' away from me. One of the other guys smacked his head really hard, he got so scared. The only thing I can imagine is that some A-hole planted a time delayed pyrotechnic device of some sort.

 

Years ago the junkyard in Auburn with old cars and parts was the Auburn Auto Recycler, an old house and buildings and some '50s GM busses full of parts up front, a few old cars out back yet. Still a yard now but that stuff is all gone, always wondered what happened to the piles of vintage parts (heard the guy's wife left him and he burned the house down and killed himself, so probably all scrapped, who knows, place is now Pick 'n' Pull).

Anyhow, my '60 Pontiac had broken down and I needed to go out there for a generator. Only way out there was to use my mother's car and she's in one of her moods where she won't let me drive it, she has to drive. So here I am out there in this like '55 GM city bus picking one out and she's followed me in here when there's a noise in the back of the bus.. now it's like 3 in the afternoon and this raccoon climbs up and starts walking down the middle shelf on the left side. We didn't exactly run out of there, but he kept coming right at us, and since that's not normal for a 'coon - they're supposed to be nocturnal - we didn't take our time getting back out of the bus either. For all I know they fed the thing or something, we walked past a spot where they had a small smelter and had been turning aluminum cat food cans into ingots so maybe he got to clean out the unwashed cans. He wasn't frothing at the mouth rabid.

I think the genny I ended up with was for a '57 Olds, not a '60 Pontiac, but it fit and worked.


The only other good story I have is when I turned 13 my grandad took me to a place to get a windshield for the VW bug I had in the yard. Not because of the junkyard, but because as we pull out of my house I look up at the apartment over the store across the street and two of the girls who live there are stark naked hiding from someone behind the curtains in the picture window, with just a bit of curtain behind them hiding part of their asses. One was about 3 or 4 years older and the other was my age. I never had the nerve to thank them for dressing up for my birthday though. Would love to have known what the story was behind that.



At another place that shall remain nameless, I once watched them test fire an engine that was loose on the ground, by hooking up battery, fuel line and so on.... I was told not to tell anyone I saw that, it probably would have violated a few state reg's -

 

Years ago I worked in a yard, a regular customer "Big Dave" (about 7 ft tall and 500 lbs, at least he seemed like it back then) wanted to go find a radio for a mid sixty's big car Ford. About an hour later I decided to go move some junk cars with the big forkilift over to the smash pit for the crusher. They were stacked up all topsy turvy and I just kept adding to the stack with more hulks. Stacking two or three on the forks and lifting them up and tipping them over onto the other junkers. (This was a great stress reliever back then!) Well all of a sudden I hear a bunch of yelling and cussing and Big Dave comes out of one of the cars I just pushed a bunch of cars onto. I drooped a car on the car he was in!!! Boy was he pissed! After making sure he was OK I skedaddled to the front office to hide. After a few minutes Big Dave came in with the radio and was looking for me. When he found me he looked at me dead in the eye and says "You owe me this" shaking the radio in my face.I meekly said YES SIR, I believe I do! I still see Big Dave at the dirt track on Saturday nights and we have a good laugh over it now but boy was he pissed back then.

 

I have two that come to mind:

The most recent, I had a burglar alarm call at a body shop with a fenced large yard(if ya'll havn't figgered it out by some of my previous posts I play a law man on work days) The front door was wide open, call a couple of my buddies and we sweep the building seein if there was still folks there that shouldnt be....got done with that and I gained access to the yard section through an interior door...prior to going out there I rattled and banged around trying to get the attention of the guard dog that I felt reasonably sure was there...

No dog (so I thought) so us three head out to the yard to see if any bad guys were scabbin parts off the cars. I get to the front bumper of a new chevy pickup with a fresh unpainted hood and come face to face with kujo....nary a sound from his lips but a nice mean toothy grin...

I Bo Duke it across the hood of the chevy and was at the back door before my feet hit the ground whilst giving one warning yell/retreat...one of my boys heard me and was right on my heals, the other heard nothing...all he saw was two lightning flashed movements of blue and silver and figured it was time for him to go too (he said he figured he'd sort it out later...smart man)

Seems the dog didn't bark, he'd wait for you to come to him...seeing as the dog was chewing on the fence to get to us once we were on the appropriate side I figure we did pretty good not getting bit...


The other, I sliced the living shit outta m hand while yankin a posi rearend out of an ex-cop car at the pull apart (prior to my current career....weird) had the diff about 50% out and still had a ways to go and figured if I left to go get stiches and come back that someone else would capitalize on my work and it would be gone by the time I got back....So I did what any sensible gearhead would do....grabbed my greasy ass rag, wrapped my hand up, looped some electrical tape around it and called it good till I got my haul home.....then went to the hospital to get sewn up....wife just didnt get it.

 

About 1976 in Long Beach, CA, I went to a salvage yard with camera in hand with the hope of taking photos of vintage cars. I got perhaps 10 feet inside the yard, saw the "owner"-a crusty old fart and asked to take photos. I was greated with a "GET OUT OF HERE BOY!" reply. What a deflating experience!

 

I can remember another time I had the crap scared out of me, I was working at Griffin Motors and I had 2 of my sons with me, I was in the main garage and I could hear what soiunded like an old 6 volt GM starter turning over and over , I didnt think about it for 10 minutes , one of my sons came running in and said," Dad , Richie is driving the old tow truck!!!" well Richie at this time was 5 years old and it was a 5 ton 37 Chevy with a 20 foot boom, as I ran my ass off to get to the area where I had parked it last, I found my boy had got in the truck and was standing on the starter switch on the floor with both feet hanging onto the steering wheel , now I knew I had left the truck in reverse and couldnt figure how he would have gotten out!!!! well he hadden..he was climbing a 30 foot elm tree with it in reverse and every time he got the rear wheels off the ground the truck would slide back down the tree, now the scarey part is..on the other side off that tree was a 30 foot drop and about 10 cars at the bottom..how that tree which was right at the edge of the cliff held the weight of that truck I will never know..Just glad it did, from that day on I took the battery cable off it!!!!!..By the way Toml24 the owner of this yard wasthe same way , as he was telling me off, the phone rang , he said' DONT MOVE " and ran for the phone, when he got back I had pulled the motor he was working on getting out..All he could say was " can you start tomorrow ?"..lol..

 

I worked at a yard in Cambridge Ontario, they called me Smokin Roy Boy..and it wasnt cause of my torch handy work...lol...One day at work the boss said to me " Roy we had a bad frost last night , you better not have a plant out in one of yards"..lol..

 

No one ever lose a cell phone? You walk to the office to call a friend, have him call you every five minutes while you wander around listening for the ring. And feeling like a fool.

 

Never lost a cell in a yard and this aint about broken body parts or lost tools or close encounters with animals ..But theres a yard on hwy 4 in western Ontario Canada and me and a club memeber were walking around a 51 Merc 4 door and he was bad mouthing his old lady saying" well I think I am just going to tell her to move out I am tried of fighting with her over car shows" and the next thing you know he could hear her voice yelling his name , he looked at me , I looked at him and wondered where the hell the voice was coming from..He had bent over to look at something on the Merc and he had turned his cell on and dailed her by mistake..I dont know what he told her to explain it all..lol.. but he is still with her!!!!

 

I got them boots right here......cost me a pretty penny!

 

One time I drove about 40 miles into the backwoods to get vintage car parts from a private yard. was there about an hour trying to pull a 4 barrel intake off of a 56 Merc. all of a sudden the hood came down and caught me on the bridge of my nose. Fuck I thought as I ran for a mirror to see the damage. Turned out it peeled my nose meat down over the front and i had to push it back into place. Then it hit me...here I am alone 40 miles from home bleeding like a bastard. Had to load up all of my tools and parts then head for home. Bled like a stuck pig all down my face,neck and shirt. Called the wife and said not to be alarmed when I come through the door. Had to have a quick shower and change clothes and headed to the hospital. They had to freeze my nose,reopen the meat and clean it out from the dirt and rust from the jagged/rusty hood edge.They "GLUED" my nose meat back on and I remarked that I felt like Michael Jackson! I have a nice scar on my nose to remind me.....

 

Wrench in one hand, 25 foot sprayin hornet spray in the other.
Works on snakes too.