Progress

And another post, because looking through old posts trying to find a good 'before' I could use I came across that old satellite photo of the yard, and thought it would be fun to see if there was a more recent one.

Here's the old one, taken in I think May 2010, if I'm remembering correctly; it was just before we started the blog, I know.

And here's what Google Maps is currently showing for this address:

The picture quality is definitely not as nice as the older picture (and those craggy tree-shadows are a bit confusing); still, you can get a decent idea. I would guess it was taken about the first week of May, going by the fact that the willow tree has leafed out and when I checked the neighbor's yard his flowering pears were in bloom. I'd almost say it was taken a couple days ago, except that the arbor vitaes are still there. It is hard to make out what's over there by the Shop, but it's probably the other Bugs before they were moved. So I'd guess this picture is almost exactly a year old. You can see that except for that jumble of something over by the shop it looks pretty much like a completely normal yard, devoid of hoarded cars and other junk.

And that is very, very wonderful.

Shop Progress

Remember that goal we made, the one where we wanted to get it all cleaned up over by the shop by the end of 2013? Well, it didn't exactly happen by that deadline; however, we are still plugging away at it.

A couple of weeks ago now (yes, I'm still catching up; this should be the last of it, though I've been itching to write a post just about Ratty, because Ratty has fans) Tara decided we should attack that area, or part of that area anyway. So we went after the spot where not too long ago there had been several old Volkswagens in a little fenced-off space. I guess you could say that it was the last fragment of my father's car hoard, in that area anyway. There are still other cars, but they've mostly been moved around or rearranged, even if they haven't left the property yet. Also there are a few indoors, in, say, the downstairs garage. But this bit here had some kind of weight to it in my mind; maybe just because it was old Volkswagens, or because it was visible, or because it represents the last of the outdoor junkyard car-hoard.

The two Bugs that had been there earlier, true, had not actually left the property, instead being squirreled away in the (upstairs) garage while Tara considers if they're worth restoring. Hint: they're not, though Tara may hold out some hope. She did take a good long look at them the other day, and while I'm not exactly sure what she concluded, there was a lot of head-shaking involved.

But anyway. Things (by which I mean junk cars) have been moving out of that area for a while now; we didn't really get a proper 'before' when the cars were moved into the garage, so this one from almost two years ago now will have to do:

So since that picture was taken, the light blue and dark red Bugs have been moved into the garage, and the orangey-red Bug has been cut into pieces. The only thing left of that is the chassis, which Tara for some reason thinks has decent floor pans or something; well, we'll skip my opinion of that because I'm sure you can all guess. Also since that picture was taken, that crappy picket fence has gone, and the arbor vitaes which were only planted there as a screen to hide the junk behind them have been cut down. The stumps will need to be dug out at some point, of course. So when we started the other day this is what was still there:

The tarp-covered thing is what's left of the chassis; the rest are some non-metal bits and bobs that are notoriously tricky to get rid of in this town as they aren't recyclable materials and so have to be thrown away in town bags, which means cutting things up into little pieces which is frankly a needless pain in the ass; but what you can't see is that that area has not been raked.

You'd think that wouldn't be a big deal, would you? Ah yes, but you have to understand--my father didn't just save old cars. He saved all kinds of crap. And he didn't keep things separate. He piled all the stuff together in a jumble.

And sure enough, when we started raking up the old leaves and the layers of dirt created by years and years of those old decayed leaves there was metal a-plenty, several bins full; in one place I think he must have had (yet another) gallon can of large bolts because I just kept finding them. But we persisted (despite the occasional poison ivy root) and I think we got it all. Here's the after, though it's a little deceptive because we just moved the chassis out of the way and didn't actually remove it from the property:

Here's another before, from a different angle; you can see the arbor vitaes have been cut:

And another after, from a slightly wider view:

So that's very nice, and probably the first time that patch of ground has seen daylight in decades.

But there was other progress.

The other day driving home from the supermarket I saw a cardboard sign nailed to a telephone pole that said CLEAN FILL WANTED with a telephone number. When I got home I called, and though the guy said he was really looking for dirt, he said he'd consider taking away some of that concrete rubble I've been trying to get rid of since forever. And sure enough the next day he swung by and got some.

He was out there for the better part of an hour, chucking bits of concrete into the back of his pickup truck while I did some gardening, but I swear it didn't look like all that much went. Here are some befores and afters of the pile around that poor lilac bush by the shed. Before:

And after; he only got a couple from this side, apparently.

He took a lot more from this side, though the 'after' still doesn't look all that different:

And after:

I do know and appreciate that every bit is progress, but holy crap he took a (large) pickup truck load and it barely looks like any went away at all.

He also spent some time over by that half a cord of concrete blocks over by the shop that nobody wants, but he only grabbed a couple bricks it looked like:

See? Doesn't look like much went there either.

The guy had said he'd take the blocks, too, not just the rubble, and said he'd be back sometime later; but a few days went by and I didn't see him or hear from him. I figured he wasn't really all that interested after all.

But then Tara noticed this:

I don't know when he came back. I'd been keeping sort of half an eye out for the guy but must have missed him. But there they were, or rather, there they weren't, and wow am I glad to be rid of those damned things. And even if that guy--bless him--doesn't end up coming back for the rest, I now understand there are people who'll happily take them away for me.

So, little by little it is coming along.

Also, with all that stuff we (literally) dug up, it'll be time for a metal run soon, probably later this week.

Yes, there is still more. But of course!

Another Tipping Point

I don't know if you readers remember, but Tara has made it a goal to clear out the area by the shop before the first snowfall. Now, it snowed yesterday but didn't stick past overnight, so we'll assume the clock is still running.

As part of that plan, lately she's been attacking the bit right against the north boundary of the property, up against a tumbled-down old stone wall. There were some bits of cars there; I think I counted them as half cars in the total number in the yard, I'm not sure now.

At any rate, this is what Tara managed to come-a-long up onto the trailer a few days ago:

(Pictures by Tara.)

I honestly can't identify that. I think it's a chunk of Citroën DS, but it might be a piece of a Saab Sonett. Well, whatever it was, it was a damned heavy rusty hunk of rusty rust.

Tara had thrown some other peeled-off jagged bits into the Bus; with that and some generators off we went to the scrapyard. Lovely, isn't it?

Though the Bus wasn't too pleased about the heavy load, still we made it there without incident. Now that doesn't seem worth mentioning, does it? Oh, but it is. And right about now you'd be correct to be getting a faint sense of foreboding.

But anyway first we went to the precious metals warehouse-thing where they took the generators off our hands; it was a different guy there this time, though, one I didn't recognize. He gave us our receipt and then we drove around back.

Where we emptied the bus just fine; but then there was the matter of getting the huge hunk of former European car off the trailer.

Tara of course couldn't budge it on her own; she'd used the come-a-long to get it there in the first place (and then left it there because it was holding the thing on the trailer) but that obviously wouldn't work the other way. So we asked the guy in the Claw.

But alas! The Claw actually was not up to the task; it tried to grab on but couldn't get a good grip (or the guy operating it wasn't that good at it; he gave up pretty easily, I thought). So he tried the magnet instead.

Maybe he was new there, maybe it was just too odd a shape, I don't know. But he had a hard time picking it up with the magnet too; eventually he sort of half picked it up and then slid it off the end.

Yes, well. The trailer was still attached to the trailer hitch. Or it had been.

Granted, the hitch was sort of a homemade jury-rigged thing; I was always worried about how it attached to the Bus proper (I have no idea what there is left of the Bus under there) but apparently I should have been worrying about the construction of the trailer hitch itself.

Because with that much weight on the back end of it, the weld came apart.

As for the trailer itself the guy managed to mangle the fenders on it and pull the plywood up. I mean fair enough, it wasn't the sturdiest trailer on the planet, but still. The guy looked like he felt kind of bad, but not bad enough to actually do anything about it.

When we got to the front and told the guy there, he couldn't help us either. Tara was sure there must have been somebody there with a welder; but no. They just kind of shrugged. No, I'm not personally pleased with that. They broke it, they should fix it.

But at the time there wasn't much to do about it. The main concern was how would we get the trailer home, so the whole thing could get fixed?

Well, the bar serving as bumper that was actually part of the hitch was still there; and Tara managed to chain the thing up without a ball. And so we went home, somewhat less than legally, with frequent stops to check that the thing wasn't coming off. We made it, just fine, though we were plenty nervous. Tara got this picture later:

Yeeaaaaah, don't know about that. I mean it got home with us, but that was probably pure luck.

Tara has some ideas about fixing it, and making it much stronger this time; she also said, and I suppose she is right, that it broke sort of at a good time. I'm not sure it was the best time myself--that would probably have been at home, with nothing on it--but at least it wasn't on the way there. Because that could have been very bad indeed.

But anyway that area over by the north wall is slowly getting cleaned up. I looked around at all the photos I'd taken that were supposed to serve as 'befores', but none quite matched up. I had to make do with this:

It's pretty close. And here's the after, or the middle, since there are still things over there that need to go:

The posts will have to come out; and you can see that we still haven't figured out how to get rid of that stack of concrete blocks. Nobody seems to want the damned things.

So then. We managed to get rid of some assorted 'precious' metals (including everyone's favorite, irony aluminum) and another 1300 pounds of #1 iron. And so that tips us over past the 40,000 mark to 40,100 pounds, or 20.05 tons removed on our forty-seventh trip to the place. Twenty tons. All of it removed one piece at a time.

Thanks, Dad.

V-Dubious

Oh my darling Rusty. How I missed you. But like they say absence just makes the heart grow fonder (actually I think the psychological term might be intermittent reinforcement.)

So today our steadfast Rusty Hunk showed up to take away another rusty hunk (of rusty rust), this time one of the old, much-loathed Volkswagen Bugs, this one being especially hated by me because I used to actually drive the damned thing. Oh, the fond memories of cruising along well under the speed limit while everyone else swooshed by me since if you tried to go fifty in it the steering wheel would shudder horribly and it would feel like it was about to break apart like the Enterprise at Warp Eleven (She canna take any more Capt'n!!!)

Oh did I say fond? Actually I meant that other four-letter word that begins with an F.

Here's the damned thing, after we dragged it out from behind the shop. It took quite a bit of abusing Larry the Volvo station waggon to get it there to where the ramp truck could reach it, but that was as good as it was going to get. You can probably make out the skid/drag/burn marks in the background (the latter made by Larry as he repeatedly spun out, as he has just an atrocious lack of traction):

(Pictures taken today by Tara.)

It was yellow, once upon a time, though it's hard to tell now what with all the greeny Xanthoparmelia lichens on it. Yes, it's been sitting there that long.

As we were dragging it out I was the one chosen to sit in it and attempt to steer. For some reason though I wasn't thinking, though I should have known; for as I placed my foot upon the floor, lo! the rust parted and it went right through to the ground beneath.

When José came by with the ramp truck today he gave it the usual look, but seemed resigned to taking it. Here he is doing I'm not quite sure what, probably trying to find something solid to attach a chain to:



And here it is going away, hurrah!



When we got to the junkyard though the big scale was broken so they had to guess; they said something like a ton. If we'd gotten rid of it last week we might have made a bit more, as the price of iron crashed this week, so we didn't make anywhere near as much as usual. But that's okay. The thing is out of my yard, and one just can't put a price on the psychological benefits.

Here's a before, from last summer or autumn I think:



And today's after:



And so we are now at fifteen junk cars out of here, with eleven to go. Two more and we'll be in the single digits, which, really, I don't think I could have even imagined a few years ago. But it looks like it's happening.

That's nothing short of a miracle.

Tipping Point

So today was the day of days, O wonder and splendour! Today we passed the half-way mark in the number of cars removed from the yard. Today we got rid of car number fourteen. Rusty be praised.

Well, okay, that's only counting since the beginning of this blog, which we started in June 2010. If we go by the number of cars here in the yard at its worst, we've gotten rid of sixty-six cars, or a good 84.6%, which is pretty damned impressive if you ask me.

Today's sacrifice to the Gods of clean yards was the old brown Saab over by my (poor neglected) vegetable garden. It was, in fact, the old junker under which a certain batch of kittens hid once upon a time; but such sentimental concerns did not save its rusty self from the scrapyard. Mind you, to a hoarder, that would have been a perfectly valid reason to keep it, forever. And you know I'm not kidding.

It was a little tricky to tell just how rusty it was, as the thing had been painted rust-brown to begin with; but I'm pretty sure it was, like almost all the other cars in the yard (including the fiberglass ones), the inevitable rusty hunk of rusty rust.

But it went, and that patch of grass can get started on growing in again. Here's the before:



And the after, yay!



And there it is up on the ramp truck. The guy taking it away, José, gave it the usual dubious look. It is a little surprising he found something solid enough in the front to hook the chain to. But he did, and away it went.



So like I said, that makes fourteen down, with twelve left to go in our Mr. Rusty Jones's countdown. I don't know about you, but I'm thinking that means the single digits are in sight. And that is good news!

Rust In The Wind

Today it was once again time to saddle up ol' Larry the Volvo station waggon and drag the poor guy, loaded down with rusty hunks of rusty rust, to the scrapyard. Once again.

This time the main weight of it was this old Citroën engine that had been sitting smack in the middle of the lawn over by the shed; well, that and some truly scary jagged rusty bits vulture-picked off the carcass (ha! carcass) of Genviève the Citroën, as well as various bits and bobs raked up out of the dirt such as the odd shovel handle. Here's Larry's butt, as usual, for proof:



Tara for some reason has got it in her head that there aren't too many iron runs left given how much we've cleaned. She's had that idea for a while now; I'm pretty sure the psychological term is denial. And today she was all like, It just keeps coming! I just sort of shook my head and said, Yep. I think she's expecting that if we've got the place eighty-five percent cleaned by now (which is probably about right) it should start petering out, right? Yeah, well; fifteen percent of a million is still a lot.

For some time now, we have been working on the area over by the shop, where the pen used to be. And by some time I mean off and on since the fall; however, since it was only bits and pieces here and there, there hadn't really been anything to show. We've (well, okay, Tara did most of the muscle work) pulled out these absurdly huge creosote 'fence posts' (probably sections of telephone poles), which required a tripod and come-a-long, moved cars, picked up junk, gotten rid of an engine or two, taken the sections of stockade fence away, filled in holes, cut down a dead tree, burned brush, and generally tidied up. It's still not done (those old creosote fence posts are a bit of a puzzle; I'm not sure they'll burn, or, rather, I'm worried they'll burn rather too well), but here are some befores and afters.

The before is from last summer, maybe:



And the after, taken today:



And here's one looking towards the shed:



That bit of something in the middlish there is half of the back axle section of Genviève. (Yes, I'm sure there's a proper name for that part of a car, but, happily I've blotted it from memory.) It's half because Tara managed to saw the thing in two, length-wise. The reason it's still there is because we ran out of room in Larry, so it will have to wait for the next iron run. Yes, there will be another. Of course.

So, then, totals: today's iron run was the forty-second trip to the scrapyard, and got rid of another 700 pounds of iron (as well as nine pounds of aluminum specially for the smelter-man); that brings the total amount of iron removed from the property since oh whenever to 35,880 pounds, or 17.94 tons, just this close to a solid eighteen tons.

Which we will of course easily top on the next iron run, probably next week. Because, of course, there is still more.

Odd

I will never understand quite how Tara's brain works. I'm all right with that.

Because yesterday, out of the apparent clear blue, she came by and started tearing a car apart, with more or less her bare hands. Well, bare hands and her trusty Sawzall, of course. Yes, the weather has been uncommonly warm, and yes, much like Everest it was there, and yes, we all work out our frustrations in different ways, and I suppose that's not any of my business, really, but still. It was odd.

Because Tara had, for some inexplicable reason, suddenly set her sights on Genviève, the green Citroën that's been hanging out over by the shed for the longest time. We've been focusing on that area lately, and have gotten most of it clean(ish), maybe that's why; with the rest of it gone Genviève is rather obvious now, especially since the weeds have all died down for the winter.

Or maybe Tara was just bored. She had, come to think of it, actually come over to burn some brush. But watching brush burn is, I suppose, not a whole lot more exciting than watching paint dry; and I guess Tara couldn't be expected to just stand there when there were power tools calling her name.

Now Genviève didn't actually look that bad. In fact I would have thought she was one of the more intact cars left, especially compared to the Bugs by the shop that have been there so long lichens have grown on them, and no, I'm totally not kidding. But look at her:



That looks like a proper car to me; compared to the rest of them in the yard why it even looks drivable!

Yeah well. Anyone who knows anything about Citroëns, and, unfortunately, that would include me, though I swear, it was not on purpose, knows that Citroëns can contain upwards of 94% rust and still look like a car, even though at that point the only thing holding them together is the tensile strength of the outer paint shell.

But once Tara actually looked at this one, she could see that even by her standards (which, honestly, are pretty low as far as cars go) Genviève's frame had actually rotted away from the inside some time ago.

So she started tearing it apart.

But then something else odd happened.

I looked up and there was an older man on his bicycle in my yard. Now that's not necessarily that unusual; sometimes people randomly stop by to ask about car parts, so Tara went over to talk to him.

A few minutes later Tara comes over to me, and tells me that the guy lives up the street, and had offered to cut up some downed trees for us. Except, he didn't want any money for it, and he didn't even want the wood; no, Tara said, the guy had said that he knew our dad from the Conservation Commission, and that he was a good man, and so he wanted to help.

I kind of just blinked, since I knew your father and Your father was a good man should, technically, be mutually exclusive; Tara did say that she'd told the guy dad was a hoarder. But she'd told him fine, go to town with the trees.

A while later the guy, who I'm going to be calling the Odd Samaritan, comes back with his chainsaw, and makes very short work indeed of the downed apple tree, and the broken limb on the bird cherry, which we hadn't been able to figure out how to approach, since it was this giant limb which was half driven into the ground when it broke.

Then he comes over to Tara to ask what else he can cut up. Tara points him in the direction of this giant pain in the ass stump that's been in the back of the shop forever that we haven't known what to do with; a minute or two later he's like More? and Tara takes him over to the other part of the yard.

Where our Odd Samaritan cuts up another downed tree, and a broken tree limb, and then further cuts down an entire dead bird cherry tree.

At that he comes back over and says he's done for the day. I just look at him. Did he get the chainsaw for Christmas? Has he run out of trees in his own yard to cut down? Does he drive by our house every day and is simply sick of looking at the downed apple tree? I don't know. I tell him thank you, and doesn't he want the wood? No, he says; he owed Dad a favor and was happy to help. My guess is that, like Tara, he had a power tool and just couldn't resist, even if it was someone else's yard.

He watched Tara taking bits off Genviève for a while, then asked her why she was doing that; people will just take cars away for you, you know. Tara told him there were parts she wanted to save off of it; then our Odd Samaritan said, "You take after your father." Oh snap! I thought, but managed not to say anything out loud.

And then the guy left.

Well, okay. Thank you, Odd Samaritan. He certainly saved us a lot of trouble.

But back to poor Genviève. I suppose other cars have nightmares about this kind of thing; it is a little gruesome to watch a car being dismantled like this, especially when said car had a name and all. But you know, I'm strong. I'm pretty sure I'm capable of not letting it bother me.

Here's the sequence from the side, starting with the same picture from above:









And then from the back; there was really not much more underneath it all than a pile of rusty rust. What a shock.









So with all that, guess what the plan is for tomorrow? That's right, an iron run mostly comprised of Genviève bits. Well, that and this crazy heavy rusty Triumph engine that we managed to muscle into poor long-suffering Larry. Said engine was once upon a time shown to the guy who bought the TR3A back in December, to see if he was interested. He took one look at it, then told Tara to "send it back to God;" Moloch, I assume, as it is destined to be sacrificed to the furnace.

It's been a while. We'll see if the guy at the scrapyard missed us.

Lucky Thirteen

You know, our Rusty Jones is so determined, so tireless, so ruthless in his quest to rid this yard of rusty cars, that he won't even let a little thing like February in New England stop him. Now, granted, this has been an uncommonly mild winter so far, but still. Nothing much usually happens here in February.

So last week Rusty came and took away the old blue Saab 99, the one whose paint is officially called Caroline Blue, and so therefore the car has been called after it Caroline. I mean duh. This was another one that Tara hauled off to her own yard, and, while I disapprove I suppose in general, still, she's legally an adult and it's neither my business nor, and this is important, is it my problem.

So off Caroline went, out of my yard!

Here she is ready to go, up in the driveway, after being pulled up there with Tara's new Bug:



Here's a before picture from last summer, of where she was on the north side of the shed:



And the after, though it's not quite the same view. You can see we've also cleaned up around the area in general since:



And that, my friends, puts us as thirteen cars out of here and thirteen cars left, since we started this blog, anyway. If we count from the mid-nineties, well, I don't know but it's whatever seventy-eight minus thirteen is, more or less. My count, incidentally, may be a little off, as there are some, well, half cars here that I'm not sure how to tally. But for now I'm going to say we're at an even split, with fifty percent of the (recent) goal met. And that's pretty damned good!

On the kitten front (the lingering business that is taking so much of my time believe it or not), now it's just Zéphirine the shy kitten in the dining room. And with her brothers out of there, it was only a couple days before she decided she was lonely and came out begging for me to pet her. So she has, astonishingly, turned a corner, and in fact will now climb into my lap and demand to be pet. She's still pretty shy, though, and needs more work, but putting her back out as feral is thankfully no longer an option. She also has a home lined up, a friend of my mother's who knows cats and knows she's a shy one, which is good because I'm not sure she'll ever be up to the level of being able to handle a shelter situation, with all the other animals and the noise and smells and such. That friend won't be able to take her until the middle of March, which actually works out fine since that will give me time to get her solidly tame.

So there's a light at the end of that tunnel, finally, and yay!

We Came, We Sawzalled, We Conquered

I have to give my mother some credit. Because for Tara's last birthday, my mother gave her a Sawzall. You know, the type of hand-held reciprocating saw that cuts up just about anything you can put your mind to. Boards with nails in them, hunks of fiberglass, old panelling, irritating neighbors and/or their Jack Russell terrier who just won't shut up oh my God I hate that thing, and of course, our specialty around here, rusty hunks of rusty rust.

Between the shop and the shed there is the front end of an old Citroën DS; it's been sitting there for ages. I mean at least I think that's what it is; it's a little hard to tell what with being a rusty hunk of rusty rust and all. But no more. Because today Tara took her trusty Sawzall, and hacked the thing up a treat.

Tara loves her power tools. Her enthusiasm is a little frightening, at times, to be honest. But so long as I stand back, and pray, she seems to get the job done just fine.

And so today we shoved the pieces (all except the engine proper, which is still too big and will need more bits taken off it probably) into good old Larry the Volvo station waggon and hauled it away. It would have gone into the Bus, except on the way over the other back bearing decided to start going pop-pop-grind-grind-grind-crunch. I suppose that's not surprising as the two back bearings were original to the car and therefore the same age and in the same state of wear; of course Tara sounded a little less than enthusiastic about doing that job again.

Here's Larry:



Though the pieces were rather big, still they were on the light end; and though it looked full enough it turned out to be one of the lighter loads we've taken, only weighing in at 460 pounds. Still, it brings our total up to 34,540 pounds of iron removed (at least; again, before we brought it to the scrapyard, where they give us proper receipts, we'd been bringing it straight to the dump. And we did more than a few of those loads let me tell you), or 17.27 tons. And, this time marks our fortieth trip, which, honestly boggles even my brain, and I'm sorta used to it around here. And of course, ha ha need you even ask? THERE IS STILL MORE.

I didn't really get a proper before, but here's a shot of the same area from a little over a year ago. The thing Tara Sawzalled up is that dark hulk on the left. The other stuff has been going away a little here and a little there over the summer.



And here's today's 'after', from more or less the same viewpoint (note Tara's energy drink over there on the right, directly in line with the tree trunk):



It's getting there.