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| Photo compliments of Joel R. Yelich, Producer, Video Salvage ™ |
The other day I stumbled on a web site called Video Salvage offering tours of auto junk yards on video. This brought back some memories.
I received a pretty good automotive education hanging out in junk yards... in a time before Lady Bird Johnson set out to beautify America. I really don’t consider myself an ‘old timer’ but things have really changed.
I’m not going to tell you I was ever an automotive genius in any sense of the word but I learned a lot. As a kid, many Saturdays were spent hanging out (we called it hooting) at Fahey’s Auto Salvage on 15th street in East St. Louis, just a short bike ride from home. Or we might hop on our bikes for a ride to Fairmont City near the fertilizer plant... well out of our parent’s range of permission. We were only 11 or 12 years old.
In Fairmont City there was an unattended junkyard there that survived the wartime scrap drive. We once watched an older teenager removing, most likely ripping off, the transmission from a ’39 Ford. Across the road were two WW2 trainer airplane hulks. My riding buddy and I would sit in these two planes taking on the Luftwaffe in dog fights all day long. There was hell to pay when we got home but all of this was too tempting.
Wandering around these yards, befriending the legendary ‘Junk Yard Dogs’ and seeing how things were put together and taken apart, was my kind of fun. Looking at the belly of a Ford with it’s buggy springs, or a Chevy with that clumsy knee action front suspension or a huge Hudson in-line F-head 8 cylinder turned up on it’s side or stacked on a heap, one could get a pretty good grasp of things automotive. How the differential does it’s job; the interplay of camber, caster and toe on the Ackermann steering; how Kettering’s self commencer works; and the variations in braking mechanisms. All the same yet different.
It was the summer of ’49 (I was 13, Don was 14) when my friend’s Dad bought us a ’35 Ford junker to occupy our summer. It wasn’t long... the coupe was running. Unknown to Don’s dad, a milk delivery man who slept a good portion of the morning after completing his route.... do I need to say, the car did many hot-laps around the neighborhood that summer.
When my first car needed parts. I met this fine old gentleman, Manny Loeb, who operated his yard on Rt. 50 next to the shingle plant. He was a bachelor who lived in his humble and well-oiled office backroom. I remember that huge diamond ring shining from his gnarled, greasy hand as he gave change from his fat bank roll that wasn’t stuffed with Palmolive soap wrappers. Manny shared his experiences of many years in the salvage business nurturing my automotive interests. He had a few hulks that satisfied the needs of my ’25 T Model Ford. Here I learned of the advancements of the “A” over the “T.” Learned of the advantages of overhead valve engines, or valve-in-head, as Manny called them. Learned of enclosed drive shafts, V8-60’s, 59A Merc blocks, flat head V12 and V8 Caddies, dual carburetors, dual distributors and much, much more. By the way, I had and drove the “T” well before the coveted driver’s license.
An old salvage yard in Belleville, now the site of a large retirement village on Rt. 161, had some fine examples of old Plymouth and Chrysler chassis with their hydraulic brakes fitted long before Henry or the General saw fit to include them. Then there was McDanials just off Bond Avenue in East St. Louis where you could get an Olds V8 for thirty-five bucks.
In the, oh say late '50’s, early '60’s, my gear-head buddies and I would spend saturday on Easton Avenue. Lined with what I call “store front auto salvage” and AME church sidewalk Bar-B-Q’s, one could get a good lunch and visit with friendly owners of the storefronts. There we could find real treasures in the second floor and basement storage areas. One could actually see, and touch, and buy Cad/LaSalle or Packard transmissions. These killer boxes designed for real torquey applications were the choice of hot rodders.
With all this “education” it wasn’t too tough to figure out some contraption either on your car or anything else. And all the great folks one got to meet. Good times indeed.
Currently retired, my partner (pals for 60 years) and I make frequent trips to Dallas via hiway 69 through Oklahoma. We see many lots and yards filled with old cars just rusting away. We jokingly say, “now there’s a project.” We don’t even stop.