Junkyard

Hello Dear Readers!

I woke up early this morning to join Vic and Gemma on a trip to the local junkyard(don't worry Susan, I didn't get tetanus)!   Vic and I have been meeting regularly for brunch at the Steaming Mug.  Apparently, he and Jason have been spending less and less time together.  So he has more time to hang out with me!  Hooray for relationship problems!

Apparently, Vic and Gemma are old friends from high school and do stuff like this.  They asked me to come along!  Well, Vic asked me to come along and Gemma just grunted in consent.  I was so excited to be invited that I didn’t even find out what we were doing.  I was a little concerned they might have been bringing me to the outskirts of town, in the early morning, to murder me.  Lucky for me, that didn’t pan out.

We went to Big Earl’s Junkyard.  Why are the people who run junkyards either Big or Lil?  I have the same question about rappers.

Jak-Jak is said to dwell within the junkyard sometimes.  Though the killing of the feral dogs the other day took place on the other side of town.  Also, I cannot think of single Jak-Jak encounter that took place in the early morning.  Perhaps he is a late sleeper.

But I digress.  Vic picked me up in his Honda Taurus then we picked Gemma up at her mother’s house.  Like Jak-Jak, I am not a morning person, but my two buddies were both bright eyed and bushy tailed.  On the way to the outskirts of town, they explained what we were doing.

Gemma dug around in her purse and eventually produced a folded piece of paper and tossed it to me.

“I almost thought you lost it,” Vic said.

“Me too,” she said.

I unfolded it with care, treating it as if it were an ancient treasure map.  It turned out to be just that!  It was an aerial map of the junkyard that had been printed from google maps.  It was divided into over a dozen different quadrants, several of them had X’s through them.

“X marks the spot?”

“You got it backward. X marks where we found nothing,” Gemma said.

“Well, what are we looking for?”

“What else?  Bottle caps!” Vic replied.

They explained that the Newton Manufacturing Company used to produce bottle caps for a local soda supplier called Rosa Cola.  Rosa Cola went out of business in the 70s and the bottles and caps are a collector's item.  One last shipment of bottle caps was being sent over before all of the old delivery trucks were retired and replaced.

Several days after the delivery was made, Rosa Cola checked their inventory and realized they were missing one crate of bottle caps.  No one at the factory could find the missing crate.  It was assumed that it must have been left on the old truck and sent to junkyard along with all of the trucks.  So Gemma and Vic periodically come to the look for a hidden fortune in bottle caps.

“We’ve broken the junkyard into sections and we come out every once and awhile to hunt for the truck,” Vic stated.

“No luck yet though,” Gemma said.

We arrived at the dump a short time later and parked in the empty gravel lot.  The junkyard seemed to stretch out for as far as the eye could see in every direction.  It was as if an entire city had been demolished and the rubble had been neatly piled here.  I had expected it to look like the dumps in the movies, with stacks of old cars and the occasional refrigerator.  This was mountains of old manufacturing equipment.  A killer robot could be hiding right in front of us and we’d never know until it struck.  So I tried not to let my guard down.  I had never seen anything like it.  As we approached the entrance I felt the need to point out the obvious.

“It's much bigger than I imagined”.

“That's what she said,” Gemma quipped.

“Or he said,” Vic said with a roll of his eyes.

“Okay, but seriously,” I said.

“Most of this junk came from the factory.  Back when it was still open, anything that couldn't be dumped into the river got tossed here,” Vic said. We got out of the car and headed towards the front gate.

“Well, what did they make at the factory?  Besides my lamp,” I added.

“All kinds of things.  I think they probably did every kind of manufacturing there was.” Vic said.  “During World War Two when most of the men were overseas fighting, my great grandmother and a bunch of the other women had to work in the factory to make munitions for war.  All Rosie the Riveter and shit.” Before I could say anything Vic continued, his voice more melancholy.

“After my great-grandfather came home,” he continued “she and a lot of other women kept working at the factory.  She liked the work and my grandfather wasn’t ever right again after he came back.  Most of them weren't.  Most of the men from town had been in the same unit together.  Couldn’t hold down a job, just sat out back in a rocking chair all day while she worked at the factory.”

Things were quiet for a moment as I digested what Vic had said.  Until Gemma took the initiative and broke the silence.  “My grandmother remembers that after the war was over they no longer had to make bombs and stuff.  So they were working on producing wireless electrics that Nikola Tesla had designed.  But I guess nothing ever came of it.”

We had officially entered the dump.  It still went on for as far as I could see.  Some of it was standard household and commercial stuff, TVs and lawnmowers.  Then there were mountains of equipment that I couldn’t hope to identify.

“So lamps, bombs, and wireless electricity.  That’s a diverse portfolio,” I said.

“In the early nineties, right before they shut down, my sister was going to Telford Technical School and interning at the factory.  She said they had a department that was working an early nanotech manufacturing techniques.”

“Oww,” I said.  “I wonder if any of that ended up here?”  I fantasized about tiny nanomachines swarming across the junkyard, using the raw materials to build more of themselves.  Growing in number until they split into opposing factions and tried to wipe each other out.  This now superseded tetanus and killer robots on the list of things I was concerned about.

“Everything ended up here,” Vic said with a sweep of his arm.  “When it closed down, everything they couldn’t sell off was dumped here.”  At that moment we made a left turn around a machine that was the size of small house.  There were sideways warning labels all over it.  Danger!

As we headed deeper into the junkyard stacks of trash and old cars rose up around us like monoliths to ancient unnamed gods.  I'm happy to report that there was far less glass eyed, hairless baby dolls than I anticipated.

After an hour of searching that day’s designated area, we decided to call it quits.  Unfortunately, we found no treasure, bottle caps or otherwise.  All we had were some cuts and scrapes and the sighting of some unsettlingly well-organized raccoons.

Vic and Gemma were kind enough to give me a lifetime invitation to join them anytime I wanted.  And when am I ever busy?  I feel as if there’s a lot more there and I look forward to peeking beneath its surface.  So no big reveals, nothing crazy, but some good information about the town and my new friends!

I’ll keep you updated!

FUN FACT

The people of Kevin’s Cross refer to the shed and discarded exoskeletons of cicadas as ‘bug nuts’.