On a late afternoon in the
fall the chill came on quickly. Above
the placid waters of the huge reservoir the air had begun its descent from the
surrounding mountain tops. In minutes
the afternoon would turn cold, and later
the night would bring frost. Summer was over
and October upon us.
The 90-something year old
black man and I sat on a bench fashioned from an over turned bathtub and a
sheet of plywood plopped on top. A fire
burned low in a rusty steel half barrel in front of us. The small fire wasn’t warming me.
We sat in the quiet of the forest ... the old
man, myself, the bathtub and barrel ... like
survivors in the middle of a sea of house
paraphernalia and construction parts strewn through the woods. An entire housing development might have
taken flight one evening and crash- landed on this very spot in the Catskill
Mountains, windows and doors and pediments and sinks and toilets and pipes and
gutters now thrown over a few acres of
property sliding down to the edge of the Ashokan Reservoir. Only the dirt road up from the state route
was clear of junk.
The old man threw a small
branch into the fire, enough to last until he stirred again to throw in
another. He fed the fire only a little at a time, never with larger pieces of
wood so he could leave it for a while to go check the grounds of the family owned
junk yard. He never checked the
grounds. He never went anywhere.
I frankly wondered if he ventured into the
dark house behind us at night. I would understand
if he didn’t. The run down 2 story structure
was completely dark in the day’s waning hours. Not a peep of light shown from within. It was the best imitation of a haunted house
I’d ever seen.
His name was “Sir,” as far
as I was concerned. He sat under a haphazardly
executed hand-painted sign reading “Lamar Lumber” nailed up on a tree. I tried calling him Mr. Lamar on my first
visit to his junkyard. He had shaken his head in the negative.
The Lamar’s were a Black
family who at one time had simply collected parts of homes and other buildings
and unloaded them all over their land.
This was not an easy task since trees crowded the boulder strewn property
as close together as in any eastern forest.
The old grandfather sat outside the dilapidated house day after day, cozied
up to the small fire for warmth. Even in
summer it was chilly in these woods lying near the water’s edge.
Some of the windows and
doors, transoms, kitchen sinks and picket fence sections may have come from
homes that before 1915 sat on the stone foundations now abandoned at the bottom
of the man-made reservoir. Or from the
homes New York State bought up and tore down when they widened nearby Route
28 for tourist traffic in the late 1950s.
It was time I got on with
my search. I left the fire and stumbled over
junk pieces left in the path by careless visitors. A brass chandelier three
feet in diameter scraped the side of my calf when I stepped into it. Eventually,
I found a small window I thought would be just right for the short wall on a
barn addition I planned to build. I began to drag it back to Sir for him to pronounce
a price.
I had learned to ignore
what he asked and instead without a word pass him a smaller amount of
cash. Sometimes he refused my offer and
would not take the money. Other times he
might take the bill, snap it and hold it
up to the light. I’m sure he didn’t think
I was a counterfeiter, he was just demeaning my offer. I’d add a few dollars until he smiled. The winner in this little game would
undoubtedly believe he had conned the other. I think I won sometimes, but
frankly it didn’t matter. He never
cheated me. How could he? Junk was junk and its value was defined in
the eye of the beholder. In any case, the give and take was worth the
effort because his property held wonderful old pieces with an architectural
flair unseen in today’s showrooms and catalogs.
The light was leaving the
sky when I returned with the window. On
the southwestern horizon naked black trees silhouetted themselves against the
lighter blue of the sky.
I sat down and slid my butt
around, hoping to find a few square inches not so damp from the weather. The
wind came up and I shivered.
“Sir,” I said, “let me give you five dollars
for this window.”
I passed the bill over to
him, but he did not reach out to take it.
He wanted more. I knew what he
was thinking. I’d just give up and offer
him ten dollars when we both knew he’d probably take seven. Three dollars didn’t mean much to either of
us, but we each had our code as a junk seller and a buyer. I didn’t have any one dollar bills with me. He
would say he didn’t either. I tightened
my jacket collar. I’d be here for a
while longer.
Staring into the barrel fire, I thought back to when my career of nosing around junk yards began. I had bought what was left of a Catskill mountain farm, an old house and barn from 1869 and 14 acres of pasture and woods. As I began to refurbish it, I realized how beautiful the old designs were, and how well executed the workmanship. From the catalogs I could buy, for example, a bright gussied up floor grate in brass costing nearly $500. But I decided I wanted an old cast iron black grate for less than $50. Installed, it would look like it came with the house rather than from Renovator’s Supply. I didn’t want a country landscape painting hanging over the mantel in the kitchen. I wanted an old wagon singletree instead, bolted to the studs behind the plaster. I hammered wrought iron nails into the old wooden wagon part with which to hang our collection of cast iron frying pans. I didn’t want a modern wood stove in the kitchen. I found a late 1800’s laundry stove with a large flat top on which food could be simmered. It also held a small kettle to heat water for my double bergamot Earl Grey tea. And there was space left for drying mittens. I didn’t want an ordinary wall near the back window in the kitchen. I wanted two old small barn doors in that spot, nailed up and re-finished. My wife’s foot came down at that point and I had to live with pretty wallpaper instead.
My new “hobby” would have me spending lots of time in junk shops and antique centers looking for just the right touches.
That was about the time I met
Fritz, the local area’s renowned junk dealer . He said he was a former baker, but
I imagined he’d been a carnival barker. Fritz’s
success story was straight forward. One
night many years before he prayed for God to send him a fortune. His request was granted the next morning, he
told me, when he was struck by the revelation he could make a fortune
collecting junk and re-selling it.
“From God’s mouth to my
ear,” he said in a hushed, secretive voice, although only the two of us stood
in his makeshift store near the smoky wood
stove that didn’t quite keep the place warm in the winter.
The large long room had
been a free standing garage Fritz bought from an elderly woman some years
before. He knocked on her door one
afternoon and offered to buy it. Said he
liked her garage so much he’d pay for it, tear it down and haul it off to his
property. She no longer drove and many
years had passed since the shingled structure housed a vehicle. She used the building to store a few
remaining treasures from the earlier days of her long life. She couldn’t part with a silver tray given to
her as a wedding present, or her late husband’s golf clubs. And there were old
photographs and bags of gumballs for her grandchildren when they came to visit.
They boys and girls were now in the forties, and the gum balls possibly the
same age.
Fritz began to gain a basic
understanding of the junk business and learn the ropes of his new
endeavor.
“I can’t believe what
people throw away,” he said. “They don’t even try to fix the smallest
problems.”
This was his business plan:
he would pay a measly sum for something that no longer worked, but could be
easily fixed. Sell it for a price that was
not necessarily a terrific bargain, but enough so that the buyer would feel bad
paying full retail at the shopping center. His profits were enormous. It was
like printing money.
He also understood that we
consumers accumulate junk neither we nor our friends want. When all that stuff in our attics or
basements becomes so burdensome and we yearn for a convenient bonfire on which
to throw it all, someone like Fritz appearing on the scene is a godsend even if
he’s offering only 2 cents on the dollar.
When dealing with customers,
Fritz was a master at reading the
price they’d pay right off their faces. One
winter afternoon in 1976 I found a wooden nutcracker in one of his bins and
realized it solved my problem of creating a "screw" for a 12 inch
model of an old wooden printing press I was building (think Ben Franklin). I could avoid having to laboriously carve a
main screw for the miniature press by adapting the nutcracker’s 3/4 inch
diameter wood screw for the purpose. I
offered Fritz fifty cents.
"Seven dollars,"
he said.
"You're crazy!" I
replied. He opened the small door on the
woodstove and made as if to throw my find on the fire.
"OK, OK, Eight!"
I said, reaching for my wallet.
"I'll even gift wrap
it for ya," he said, smiling and reaching for a sheet of newspaper he used
instead of paper bags.
"How did you know I
wanted it that bad?" I asked.
"Uh uh," he said,
shaking his head no. "Secrets of the trade."
Of course, I also availed
myself of the same junk resource I'm sure Fritz and the Lamar family tapped
into from time to time ... the town dump.
I could never resist the
lure of the dump in our little town when I lived up north. When I’d go to the
metal section, I often took a sort of Junk Addiction Sponsor with me. He’d hover behind me saying, "No, Dave,
you don't need it, you probably can't fix it and you don't have any space left
in the barn for it." I was pretty
well behaved for a while, but I came across a roto-tiller I thought I could fix
and have working in no time. I got it to
run for about five minutes with each attempt.
That was long enough to burn out one part or another and I spent a
couple of hundred dollars on wrist pins and compression rings and connecting
rods and ignition parts before finally giving up and admitting I'd been
defeated by the Junk Devil Who Made Me Do It.
So for a while I swore
off the mindless and wanton desire to acquire something for next to nothing. I
no longer brought home junk. But my
addiction was cunning. I was able to
forego acquiring a piece of junk for myself, but I saw beautiful objects on the piles that I knew my
fellow Junk Specialists would want. So I’d bring the item to their house and
leave it outside the garage door. I
remember finding a great looking kerosene heater that I was sure my friend
Benny would love to fix up and use in the shed at the back of his
property. He made a wonderful job of
it. But the shed burned down one
afternoon when he left the heater on and ran out to the store for a six-pack. Near the shed and singed in the fire was his
wife’s prized Holly tree. If she’d had a
gun with bullets in it, I think she would have shot me.
Next to me on the
upturned bathtub, Sir hucked up a good one for a ninety year old man and spit
into the fire.
“Have you ever been
shot at?” I asked him.
He swung his head back
and forth in a mournful No.
“You plan to shoot
me?” he said. “You already robbin’ me at
five dollars for that window.”
I laughed. “No. I
was just wondering how some of the people reacted when you hauled away their
homes.”
“They was paid for
‘em,” he said. “They was gone when we
showed up or they was sittin’ there drunk.”
I wondered what it
would feel like to stand helpless while your house was torn down and the pieces
hauled away after the State stepped in and told you to get out. It was hard to
believe no one had taken a shot at Sir and his brothers. There was something about the old man, his
craggy face, his stumped frame, that told me he had borne many a trouble in
life. And his grimace at my mention of
the previous owners of all the parts and pieces now lying here in the woods
told me a vein of sympathy ran through his soul. He would have been sorry to play the
Undertaker of Houses to any of the families who stood mute and defeated as
their home was carried away in pieces on the back of his truck to wind up here
in a cemetery of house parts.
My old acquaintance Fritz
who owned the junk store was cleaning up outside his business one day when an
older woman drove up and offered him all the junk in the trunk of her car. For free.
“Nice stuff,” Fritz
said, opening the trunk and trying to be cordial. “Where’d you get it?”
“My late husband
bought it all here,” she said. “But you can have it all back. I don’t want any of his stuff.
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.”
“I’m sorry,” said
Fritz.
“I’m not, “said the
woman. “Junk reminds me of how I was
treated for fifty-five years.”
I suppose I was lucky
to not reach a point toward the end of my junk acquisition career where like a
Santa Claus in a grease spotted red suit and a rusty sleigh pulled by eight
tiny lawn tractors I’d leave junk in your driveway in the dead of night. I left presents only in the day time. So no one ever outright threatened to shoot
me ... not exactly ... but I did wonder sometimes why no one ever called to
thank me. I didn’t really care. I was no longer cluttering up my own barn and
basement. And I was still able to experience the thrill of the chase across the
dump, pouncing on a roto-tiller or lawn
mower or cooking grill or grinding wheel as if it were a prize stag. And then like a lordly hunter I brought it
victoriously back along the trail in my truck. Right to your door.
Thus I enjoyed a
feeling of mastery and even self-righteousness as I returned to
my home empty-handed, eschewing consumption of the kill as if it were meat on
Good Friday. Like St. Francis refusing
to kill a tiny sparrow offered to him as
a snack.
I was happy to leave
Benny my last find, even if it meant he would have to overcome a little frustration
turning trash into treasure. Not knowing
the original purpose of the round brass container that looked like just another
piece of crap, I was sure with the proper shade it would make a terrific
lamp. A great project for my friend to
curse at and stew over. He finally took it
to the back of his property and dumped it near the ruins of the burned out
shack, where he was trying to nurse a crispy fried Holly tree back to health. The cylinder was messy and appeared out of
place. So when his wife complained, he
buried it ... next to the tree. It would
be a year before the Holly turned purple and the County HAZMAT team came out to pronounce his back yard unsafe for
the foreseeable future. It could be a federal offense to mow his lawn.
Had I not moved south,
Benny would have come to hate me. His
wife still does.
David
Griffin copyright
2011/2016
The Windswept Press
Murrells
Inlet, SC
windsweptpress.com
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