A couple weeks ago now, on the last day of winter, we did (yet) another iron run; and even though it wasn't all that long ago I swear maybe my brain has just used up all the available space for these things because I don't really remember what went down now. There were no Bus-related disasters, at least, which is good, and which you'd think might make it memorable as it's just so unusual; basically though we just got there and unloaded the stuff and were good to go.
This one mainly consisted of a hunk of old car, an old lawnmower that Tara had had for a while but which was originally one of our father's (I guess she gave up trying to fix the thing) and these two old fireplace-pipe-thingies from the 70s, probably dating back to the oil crisis, which would have affected the home heating oil situation (not that my father particularly believed in heating the home). They were supposed to be some kind of passive way to heat the room better with a fireplace; the thing sat in the fireplace and the fire was built inside it. In theory, cool air went in the bottom, was heated, and then came out the top, creating some kind of air current because heat rises. Yeah. In theory. Tara had taken one to try in her own fireplace, and even went so far as to hook up a fan to the thing at the bottom; but no, in practice they are pretty much useless. Oh the 70s. Can't say I miss 'em.
Here's a picture of the load from two views; you can see the two tubing-fireplace-thingies. In addition to being useless, they were damned ugly. Which does accord with the general ambiance of the seventies,* so there's that.
We also managed to scare up a few more generators, as shown here:
Which sounds kind of whoop-de-do, I know, but they fetch a decently high price given their size. I guess they're mostly copper inside.
So then, once again this load was on the light-but-bulky side and so only came to 660 pounds; but that brings our totals now up to 44,000 pounds or an even 22 tons of iron removed since whenever we started keeping track like six years ago now. And remember, there was quite a bit more before that; we used to just haul stuff to the dump and I distinctly remember cleaning up a huge pile of I-beams and pipes at one point. It was our 57th trip to the scrapyard, and just yesterday we were out there digging up more as we cleaned out a spot by the shop. But that's yet another post to catch up on, so you'll have to wait for that.
*With the exception of Jimmy Page, of course, who was damned pretty at the time.
11 comments:
YAY YOU'RE BACK!
If you're to the point of digging up crap to get rid of and shoving out stuff that one of you thought might be salvageable at one point, that's a good thing, right?
Jenny Islander
I've enjoyed all four of your update posts. Thanks especially for the updates on your lovely cats. What a fine bunch they are!
I don't know if you're interested in where the scrap goes after you wash your hands of it, but I just read Adam Mintner's Junkyard Planet and it has some really awesome photos of people doing stuff like opening generators to get at the wires inside. You might find the chapter on the giant hammers that pound old cars into smithereens for recycling satisfying, too, it's pretty epic.
Another tidbit from the book, one that made me think of you: it took so long for American scrapyards to figure out how to get the valuable scrap out of cars, people couldn't get rid of them and just abandoned them all over the country for decades. Scrapyards didn't catch up on scrapping the backlog of old cars until just before the recession started in 2008! So you're making progress faster than the industry as a whole.
So happy to see that you survived the winter! Love your updates, and the kitty cat pictures too :-). You girls are AMAZING!
I for one, was ELATED that you posted updates on both the yard and cats, even if they make me sneeze...darn cute critters you got!
SO much progress...even in winter.
And a new house...no wonder there haven't been any posts...
BUSY GALS, BUSY LIFE!!
44 tons...yow-za!!
Post away...you know I like reading it...
and btw---it was confirmed...my best childhood friend is a garbage in house hoarder. her younger was there doing some initial cleaning...like a path to a chair from the front door...and I stopped in. First word out of my mouth was "P-U". Friend broke her leg by slipping on ice and it's a good thing...sad to say, but younger sister was finally able to get int the house and take charge!!
Post away...love your undaunted courage and tenacity!! and please, let us know how your mom feels about all this. If you dad didn't respect you as kids, I can't imagine what your mom went thru!!
a fan/reader from suburban chicago
My mother is evil. Someday maybe I'll tell you the story about how she was just going to sit there and let Danny the six week old kitten die, and how she was oh so upset and sad that he was dying but bringing him to the vet never once crossed her mind.
So when I say she's evil I mean that. I can think of no more succinct definition of the word than to describe someone who would watch a kitten die when it was well within their power to help.
I mentioned that to her not too long ago, and she told me that if I wanted to rewrite history she couldn't stop me. Yeah. I believe the technical term for that is gaslighting. She's a narcissist with some histrionic personality disorder on the side I think, though it's really hard to pin down because so much of what my mother does (and has always done) is simply bizarre.
So yeah. I am not cleaning the yard for her benefit.
Oh, Danny is fine (as you can see from the recent picture).
oh gosh....yea,,,my mom is no picnic either. very blase' attitude when we told her we were expecting each of three times. Third time her reply was, no joke: "Again, Why?" and this from my mom who had three herself....
for some reason I had it in my mind that your mom was a bit oppressed by your father and had little say in the way things ran in your house growing up.....retrain my brain on that one!
No matter what she thinks....there are good many of us who read this and think so highly of you two and all you have been thru and the challenge of cleaning up the mess!!
a reader from chicago
Another reader here, happy to see you're back! Congratulations on the new house and the clean yard at the old house, and I'm so sorry about the cats who passed away. You did the right thing for Sir Isaac by making sure he wouldn't suffer.
Treating me the way you wanna do ... Why didn't my last comment post? Anyway, glad to see you're back!
I don't know why it didn't post; nothing's got lost on the back end of the blog as far as I can tell.
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