Girls Why Not Take Out The Trash

It's always fun to hear a horrible noise coming from outside, and then realize that it is coming from your own yard. Which is just what happened the other day; and going into my studio room on the other side of the house I could see that it was Tara out there with her trusty Sawzall, chopping up another old rusty hunk of rusty rust.

This one was especially gratifying for me because it was one of the few old Bugs that are left here.

Now, you may be wondering something, something, incidentally, that I myself wonder. Why not just call the rusty hunk removers and have them haul it away? Why go through all the trouble of cutting the thing up?

Tara would say it's because she has plans to restore one of the Bugs. I think this is pure foolishness, myself, but so long as she's not doing it here in my yard I suppose I don't care. And this Bug, for some reason, has decent floor pans (well, 'decent' by old rusty Bug standards). That is what she said and I am not making it up.

And while this, I will admit, does rather annoy me as I'd just as soon see all the damned things pushed off a cliff into a river of lava (à la the One Ring; really, it's the only way to be sure), still, if she's doing the work she can go to town on it. So long as the thing goes away.

So. Tara chopped away at the thing bit by rusty bit. Here's the before, in all its rusty hunk glory [sic]:

I know. I'm not seeing anything worth anything there, either. Tara says it's because I've gone too far the other way into crazy anti-hoarder OMG I must purge!!!! territory; I kind of don't think so. In fact I suspect I'm still far too reluctant to throw things away. After all I'm letting her get away with the But I want to saaaave it schtick right now, aren't I?

And here's what she left of it:

To be fair, there is another Bug out there that has been waiting to be hauled away, but the tow people can't ever seem to get back to Tara about it, so it hasn't moved. I don't think the local ramp truck companies have blacklisted us, or at least I really hope not; these may not look like much with all the rust, but given that they are older cars there is still a higher proportion of metal in them, since a lot of cars these days have a good deal of plastic on them. I don't know what's up with that, but I'd like to get that other one out of my yard sometime soon. Especially given that it's the old light blue Bug, one I used to drive, and so I have an especial hatred of the thing. Oh and now I've got this song in my head:


Yeah. That's about right, alas.

So Tara loaded all the bits and pieces up into the revamped and hopefully sturdily repaired trailer; and off we went to the scrapyard.

Here's the trailer:

That's pretty satisfying to see, especially as even in bits and pieces it's quite recognizable as an old Bug.

As all the pieces were on the light but bulky side no Claw was used and the trailer survived the trip; on the down side though it wasn't a very heavy load at all. In fact it only came to 400 pounds, I think the lightest one so far. Still, that brings up the total, which is now 40,500 pounds of iron removed from the property, or 20.25 tons. And it was our forty-eighth trip to the scrapyard. Two more and we'll hit fifty, which is pretty much literally crazy. And there will be more beyond that, I'm sure.

You know I was worried that figuring it this way would be double-dipping, as the bits of the cars are being counted towards the total iron removed while the car itself will count for Rusty's total when it leaves; but they really are different units. True, I haven't usually been adding the weight of the iron of the cars to the iron removed total, but this is an imperfect science, I suppose. The main thing is that this stuff goes.

And that's a success all-around, I think.