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.

The Tetanus Burger 2013 Year-In-Review

So I guess it's also (long past) time for the 2013 Tetanus Burger Year-in-Review. We didn't get as much done this year as we have in years past; but then again the yard is actually beginning to look decently clean these days, so it feels rather less urgent. Also, there have been other life-type things happening, and that is after all where one's focus ought to properly be, rather than on cleaning up someone else's goddamned mess.

So here's the usual montage of junk run photos; note again that the 'precious' inside-the-Bus shots weren't separate trips.

There is still, of course, plenty more inside various outbuildings (especially the Shop), which we still have to get to, so we'll be here a while yet. But I think this year was the year it actually started looking mostly 'normal' out in the yard. Some of the buildings do need a bit of work (my father wasn't big on finishing things, you know), so there will be that too.

Only one car left the property this year, that Saab I just wrote about. Here's the picture to refresh your memory:

Altogether it came to a little more than a ton and a half of junk iron scrapped (1.62 tons or 3240 pounds), which isn't bad.

Plenty of other things happened too, of course, mainly being that my father, the man who hoarded up the place, died at age 90. I still haven't shed a single tear, or even felt sad, and I don't expect to. He was really not a very good person, though oddly enough if you were (say) one of the Townies sitting down next to him at the coffee shop you'd probably have thought him a perfectly nice person. And in an odd way, he sort of was: I'd even almost call him 'mild' or 'gentle' in some ways. It's hard to explain. I think it comes down to intent on his part. He had no idea that what he was doing was anything other than the right and normal thing to do, and he had absolutely zero insight into his own mind. I really mean that. Absolutely none. It was just what he did, or what he was. The most I think someone who was acquainted with him might think was that he was a bit odd and was one of those old men who could talk your ear off, but who was otherwise harmless.

Well, that's the people who didn't know him, of course. Underneath the first impressions was a man who pretty much never matured past early childhood. I don't mean that facetiously, either; I mean that his view of the world and the things in it, and how he related (or didn't relate) to them was stuck at the understanding of a toddler. He could not understand that other people were not him. He simply was not capable of that kind of insight. Nor was he capable of understanding that the way he believed the world worked was not actually how it did. And that meant that in practice he was a stubborn, miserly (and miserable) bastard who didn't see his family as properly human and who considered his whims more important than the needs of his children. He didn't care that there was no hot water, so when we complained we were just whining. He wasn't cold when the house was set at 55˚ in winter, so that was that. He was the only one who had any rights; when we complained we were trying to take away those rights. Or maybe even that's giving him too much credit. I think to him we really were just these sort of noises in the background. We weren't real. I don't know if anything was real to him. If your view of the world is literally delusional then how do you define reality?

Anyway, I'll not mourn him. Though that's not out of spite (not that I wouldn't be entitled to that). It's just that there was nothing there to mourn.

Actually, I was far more broken up over the deaths of my two older cats. No, not any of the ones who were kittens and featured here on the blog a couple years ago; these were the two who didn't get talked about much here. The first one who died, Sir Isaac Mewton, had a tumor, one he was diagnosed with a couple days after my father's death. I never found out exactly what it was (the local ultrasound guy was on vacation at the time) but both vets I talked to, when talking about the possibilities, just shook their heads sadly, and told me even surgery probably wasn't going to help. So I opted to just let him go without interfering. He got all the treats, and he went outside every day (something he'd been obsessed with for years), and I still don't know if I made the right decision. He died at the end of August, at twelve and a half years old. He was a good, good kitty, Isaac was. Let's see if I can find a picture:

That picture was taken during a bout of pancreatitis a few years back; you can see the shavey spot on his flank where they did the ultrasound that time.

Then my Maude died; she was fifteen but still getting around fine, though she was a little creaky and maybe a bit deaf. One night I realized I hadn't seen her all day, which is not that unusual (she'll hole up on a bed and sleep all day), and so I went looking for her. By the time I was starting to wonder if I should worry I found her, stone cold dead, under the futon upstairs. I had no warning at all; I assume it was something like a heart attack in her sleep. Here's a picture of her, my Maude:

Anyway. I suppose all that (and honestly, I am still in mourning over them) is one reason the cleaning had a bit of a lull. And yes, I'm going to totally change the subject to happier things, now.

So. I figured given all the hullabaloo about the kittens a couple years back, you reader-sorts might like to know how those guys are doing. The younger ones are all fine and happy and still tearing around the house like frisky kittens. I snapped this picture the other night of almost all of them:

In the foreground is the ever-handsome Ratty, of course; behind him on the blanket is Aleister Meowley, and then laid out in a row on the floor front to back are Rory, Maurice and Danny Lyon. There is one more cat here, little Mademoiselle Zéphirine Chattonne-Gris, though Tara says she doesn't believe she actually exists. She's shy, Zeffie, and maybe not as well socialized as the others, though she will come out for me and purr and such. But she does exist, and here's the proof:

She's Rory's littermate, and Aleister's little sister. Like I said, they are all doing quite well, and I am continually surprised and honored by how good-natured they are (even shy Zeffie). They've got some good genes, this family, and they purr loudly and nearly constantly.

The mommy-cats, Spot, Splotch, and Smudge are still hanging around and begging at the door; I give them a cup of chow a day in exchange for depriving them of their uteri. That was the deal I made, and it's a good one; it keeps them around back and hopefully out of the road.

There is another cat who hangs out, a tom I named Mr. Bibb for his little white front; funny thing is once the mommy-cats (whom I call The Grrls) got fixed, the other toms all drifted away, the lure of sex being apparently stronger than the lure of food, which honestly I would not have thought. Mr. Bibb himself drifted away for a while, but then suddenly reappeared not that long ago; but when he came back he was a bit scuffed up and had lost all but four inches of his tail. I can still see the bit of bone sticking out the end. I don't know what happened, though I'd guess a coyote. So he's been hanging out lately, and I have of course renamed him Bob, because I couldn't help it.

I wonder, though. I've seen him back up to things and make the motion to spray; but I never smell anything, and trust me, tom-cat spray is a scent you can't miss. I could have sworn looking at him he was entire, as they say, but I don't know. And when I was petting him the other day I noticed that the tip of his left ear looked a bit flattened, as if it had been cut off; it was a bit rough too, so I couldn't say for sure he didn't just lose it in a fight. But maybe someone else in the neighborhood has been trapping and neutering the local strays.

Anyway, though. The cats are good, and the yard is cleaner.

Eventful

Well this past Sunday we did another VW swap meet; we were worried that it maybe wouldn't be all that big, as it was a 'first annual' affair; but when we got there we were pleasantly surprised (as were the people who set it up, who were walking around with dazed smiles muttering that they couldn't believe how many people actually showed up); however, getting there, well, that was another matter entirely.

Given that it was more than a hundred miles away, and was slated to begin at nine a.m., which seriously what the hell people, we got a very early start, leaving at seven. Trust me, that's early for us, yikes. I would like to sing the praises now, if I may, of the dark-chocolate spiked Coffee Coolatta.

We took the Bus, of course, fully laden with the usual assortment of old parts and such; and it was okay for a while there, even though it was obviously pretty heavily packed. But within the last thirty or so miles it was clear that the thing was not happy at all.

It was skipping somewhat and backfiring a little pretty much constantly, and had very little power going up the hills; we were on the highway, too, probably not the best of decisions, and entering hilly territory to the north as it was. Finally Tara pulled in to one of the giant state-run liquor stores (open on Sunday!) to have a look, but didn't see anything obviously screwy. So we kept going, since if you're going to break down in your weird old car it's not a bad idea to do it at a weird old car show.

We did make it, though Tara was sweating a bit; me, I've got AAA and know I'm not going to die, though it's never much fun to deal with a panicky Tara. We pulled into the grassy field into a likely spot for vending, and Tara immediately got out and said HELP.

Well, it didn't take long to find someone who knew what was most likely going on; Tara is a decent mechanic, yes, but old VWs aren't actually her specialty. Within a few minutes a lovely man named Paul had his head under the back lid and was in the process of gapping the points with some jerry-rigged tool.

A jerry-rigged tool which worked like a charm; Tara took it for a spin after he'd finished, and declared it pretty much a new engine when she returned. Paul got his pick of old parts in thanks.

Another guy there (I don't remember his name I'm afraid) then actually gave us a new set of points, saying we should always have a set handy.

Now, maybe it was just a damsel-in-distress sort of thing, but I'll tell you my faith in humanity got a bit of a polish on Sunday. They were complete strangers, and immediately took care of us and made sure we were okay. Which is really very nice, and I am grateful.

We then set up, and though there weren't really all that many people there compared to the big show we do, still, people started buying stuff, their eyes getting all big when they saw all the milk crates of stuff.

Here's the spread:

(Pictures by Tara.)

And no, that's not our dog. Her name (according to her collar anyway) was Samantha, and she was an old thing that decided to adopt us, flopping down at my feet while I was sitting there minding my own business. I'm not sure of her motivations; we had no food, and I'm frankly not a dog person myself (you may have guessed by now I am in fact very much a cat person); maybe it was the combined total of the scents of fourteen cats between Tara and me that attracted her, I don't know. But she was mellow, and good-natured, though she kept trying to get in the Bus and go home with us. Here's a better picture of her:

It was a lovely autumn day, sunny and not too cool; and all told we did all right. Having started early it also ended early, which was fine by us as we liked the idea of getting home in daylight. So after a time we packed it all up again, and no, though we sold some stuff, again, the amount of stuff we had didn't look to have gone down even a little bit.

We were driving along a stretch of I think route sixteen, going south in such a way that the late afternoon sun was exactly in our eyes, when the acceleration suddenly stuck ON.

Within seconds Tara 1) pulled the gas pedal up (didn't help) 2) stood on the brake and clutch both while the engine revved ridiculously high 3) turned the engine off altogether and coasted into a parking lot and 4) jumped out of the car freaking out and swearing, directing her ire at one 'Mr. Sun' which now I know she'd just had a bit of a scare (me too) but was funny as hell. Like it was the sun's fault, and like he's a Mister.

When she got done swearing she went to have a look at the engine to see if she could see what was going on.

She could. It was in fact pretty obvious: the spring on the carburetor had broken.

Now. Lucky lucky us. If you are going to break down in a weird old car, it is really exceptionally helpful to have said weird old car packed full of the proper weird old car parts.

Within a minute she'd found a matching carburetor and robbed the spring off of that one; we set off again and everything was fine, and we got home without further mishap, which was fine by me, and I'm quite sure fine by Tara too.

I think that's it for the car show season, unless I am much mistaken; Tara now has this plan to clear out a section of the yard over by the shop before the first snowfall. New England weather being what it is, we'll see how that goes. But that is next.

VW Show

Well, I never said I wasn't a procrastinator. Almost two weeks ago now we hied off to the annual old Volkswagen show up by the City. The weather wasn't bad or anything; though it was cloudy and a little chilly, it was definitely preferable to last year's ninety-degree-plus temperatures. Though mornings and me are probably always going to be incompatible.

Oh, speaking of incompatible: the new Blogger interface and my old Mac browser definitely fall under that heading, alas. I've had to figure out a workaround, but I've managed, though it involves, shudder, a goddamned PC. Oh Blogger. I'm beginning to hate you. Though not enough to switch to Wordpress.

Anyhoo. There we were again at the VW show with the ratty old Bus; and, once again, as soon as we started pulling stuff out of the Bus the insane hordes, I mean, old Volkswagen enthusiasts, swarmed over and started throwing money at us. The very first thing, actually, out of the Bus was a great big interior panel from I think another Bus, and as Tara was pulling it out and grumbling about how awkward the damned thing was to haul from show to show someone made an offer. It didn't even touch the ground.

I did most of the schlepping, as Tara had broken her foot. Now, if I were a cannier sort I'd probably have called Tara first and asked her How much is my silence worth to ya? but I'll tell you how she did it anyway for free, because that's what big sisters are for. She broke it go-go dancing on a table in a swim-up bar in eight-inch heels. In Jamaica. Sounds unbelievable, doesn't it? Well, it's up to you to judge whether I could make that up or not.

Anyway the VW show was considerably less exciting, even with Tara on a bit of Vicodin, which if I'm remembering correctly was what Greg House was addicted to.

So all these people came over and chatted about Volkswagens while I gritted my teeth and tried to be polite; I guess I faked it pretty well as they didn't stop buying things. Here's the spread. I swear, even though we sell stuff, and even though at the end of every show we toss a couple of boxes because we've consolidated the rest of the stuff, it never looks like any less:

So they bought a bit of stuff and we did pretty well, though not as well as that one crazy year. And we have another show, though it's a little one, on Sunday, so we'll see how that one goes. We also got plenty of requests for other stuff that we have but didn't bring with us, and sold I think a bumper or two in the week following; so it's all right. But it's a bit tiring. I'm kind of done with this Volkswagen stuff, honestly.

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.

Dub Culture

BTW, that "For Sale" sign is covering a hole, not an indication that it's for sale.

So this past weekend, we geared up for another Volkswagen show to try to sell off some of the gems that our dad left behind for us.

We've made out like bandits at the autumn swap meet at "Transporterfest" - a VW show that is geared towards old VW buses and air-cooled models.  This time though it was a show called "The New England Dust-off".  The best part about the show is that it was only 15 miles away, within the mileage restrictions of a AAA tow.   In case the ol' Bus decided to die, AAA could tow us to the show instead of home.  Actually maybe they could tow us to the show, and then a few hours later, tow us back home.  As it turned out the bus ran well and AAA's serviced were not needed.

Well, we did okay.  In past Transporterfest Swap Meets we netted like $400-$800.  Today we only made about $150 after entrance fees and lunch.  Being Earth Day, the Earth decided to say "screw you" to all these cars on asphalt and rained on us.  Not a lot, but enough so to make it chilly and uncomfortable.

After a month of little to no rain,  today was the day that April decided to finally live up to it's reputation.  I was also fighting off a cold so it was a recipe for misery to be honest.  Plus since we got up early, I sorta was half awake when I got dressed.  Somehow I chose a pair of pants that had a huge hole in the nether-regions, so from about a few hours in, I was consciously aware not to turn my back on the customers.  As soon as the rain picked up a little, that was our cue to leave.

Mostly though the patrons of this show were decidedly not the clientele that our "product" was aimed at.   The crowd here was primarily of the water-cooled, front engine VW persuasion.  These guys cruise around in "dubs" or something, whereas I refuse to use that silly lingo (it's a Volkswagen, dammit!).   So yeah, it was a lot of young whipper-snappers with their Fast and Furious Jettas and Audis.  I think we sold more hubcaps and VW insignias to Beastie Boy fans than people who needed them for their vintage air-cooled Beetles.

Come to think of it, The Beasties are seriously old-school even for these guys.  Oh crap, I think I just seriously dated myself, Ms-Grew-Up-In-The-80's. 

The bottom line is that 90% of the stuff we brought with us, went back with us.  Still we impressed them them with the rusty bus with the hideously torn pop-top tent that only keeps out the largest of mosquitoes.

Hopefully the next swap meet will be better.  And we're getting a sense that you can only sell ANY of this stuff if it's in pretty decent shape.   I'm beginning to think that a lot of the junk we got from Dad was just that - junk.   I can't tell you how many times we opened a parts box that Dad had saved to discover - not the new part that was in it,  but the broken part that my dad replaced off a customer's car, saved of course because it was not 100% broken, you know, only like 75% unusable.  Ah, hoarder mentality permeates every thought process, doesn't it?

Plus it seems like a lot of what we have is incredibly common.  We're not talking about rare Bugatti parts of Lanborghini engines here, sadly.  It's pretty clear that most VW bits are available brand new, and with the Bug being the most popular car design in history, probably 11 million of these things were parted out, so that brings down the prices too.

So we may indeed make a scrap run out of the inevitable purge of the unsellable stuff.  Which of course,  as you know I'm going to say it- there's always more.

-Tara

Rock On Gold Rust Women

Well, now that the weather is getting warmer and things are slowly turning green here at the Best Little Hoardhouse in Massachusetts, it's time once again to start ramping up the clean-up job. So today we made, guess what, another iron run.

This time the heavy bit on the bottom was this Saab engine that took a while to muscle into the back of ever-patient Larry the Volvo station waggon; on top of that was the ancient iron dolly-cart it rode in on. That was a bit of a problem, that dolly-cart; it was mostly nothing, but the structure of it was just huge and awkward, and of course still heavy; fitting everything in there for this load required a bit of puzzle-piecing it together. But we got it all in there, eventually.

The rest of the load was made up of some truly hideous jagged bits of rusty rust pulled (and Sawzalled) off of the rotting corpse of Genviève the Citroën; good Gods look at this nasty pile of stuff:



Don't let the heavenly-looking light fool you; this stuff was a clear and present danger, and bad-tempered to boot. But we made it through, thanks to luck and a stout pair of gloves each. Well, not that the gloves necessarily matched each other; I was lucky to find a couple of right ones, though we had about eight left gloves. I don't know where they go; probably a Universe parallel to the ones socks are sent to after being devoured by the washing machine, I imagine.

Here's the backed-out view; as I said, nasty stuff, and hopefully not too much damage to the headliner.

Both pictures by Tara, by the way.

This load came to 760 pounds, with a little aluminum (and everyone's favorite, 'irony aluminum' though don't ask me what's ironic about aluminum, I'm nowhere near hipster enough) and a bit of brass thrown in; that brings our total to 36,640 pounds of iron removed from this place starting about four years ago; or in tons, 18.32; it was our forty-third trip to the scrapyard.

Tara has already talked about this Triumph engine hanging out in the downstairs breezeway, to form the start of another iron run; so that should be happening fairly soon, probably next week, as both Tara and I are busy the rest of the week. Because yes, there is still more. Somehow.

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.

Event

Now it may seem like all kittens all the time around here lately, though I suppose I won't apologize for that because if you're going to start complaining about kitten pictures, well. But there is still a yard around here that has things other than kittens in it.

Like old Volkswagen parts. Well, okay, most of those weren't in the yard, per se, but in places like the garage (upstairs and downstairs), the shop (up and down), the shed (again, up and down, though they've been having to share the upstairs with a few raccoons lately) and the cellar, not to mention the breezeway, on occasion.

So this past Sunday Tara and I bundled both ourselves and more than a few boxes of parts up into her old red VW bus and got up to that annual old VW festival we've been hanging out at a couple of years now. You remember the one. The one we made a killing at last year.

The day promised to be unseasonably warm. The morning was a bit cool, of course, and so I wore long pants. I didn't wear my jeans, as I figured it would be too hot, but I didn't think long pants would be too much.

I way, way, way, overdressed.

It was really really freakin' hot. And sunny, too; and where we ended up setting up on the showfield there was no shade at all. And given that, like last year, people immediately swarmed over as soon as we started unpacking, we didn't get much of a break. Well, Tara didn't get much of a break; I was a bit freer to say run off and buy bottles of water since I wasn't the one setting the prices and can't, really, talk knowledgeably about the stuff. Which is fine, great, even; it means I've successfully repressed all that old VW blather my father used to keep up incessantly. Go me.

Check out this spread:



I did feel a little sorry for the vendors to either side of us. Next to what we had, they had nothing much at all. Then again, one might look at that as just the tiniest bit of payment for growing up with a hoarder father, and dammit I'll take what I can get.

We even got a nibble on that old Triumph TR3A that's been sitting in the garage for a couple decades now. We'll see if it pans out, but it would be great to get that thing out of there. I still have plans to turn the garage into a wood shop one of these days.

Poor Tara, though. By the end of the day she wasn't quite right. I know, I know, So what's new? har har. But in the restaurant afterwards she drank glass after glass after glass of water before she got her core temperature cooled enough to feel all right. Dehydration can really sneak up on you, and that's not good. But she was all right in the end. Well, you know, as far as I can tell.

All in all we did pretty well this time, though not quite as stupendously as last year. Still, it was a decent chunk of cash and will enable me at least to pay off my tab at the local cat shelter/kitten clinic.

The crazy thing is that even with all the stuff we must have sold, I can't really tell that the amount of stuff went down all that much. I mean it must have; we did get to throw away a couple of moldy boxes and consolidate the rest. But the bus looked just as full on the way back as it had on the way up.

I guess that's not necessarily bad. People will actually pay for this particular type of stuff. But how long is this going to take?

Reclaiming

Remember how just last night I idly wondered,

...hopefully then that means that stockade fence will also come down soon, and the whole thing can start to get mowed and added to the yard.

Well. Last night when I talked to Tara she mentioned she might come by today; lo and behold there she was this afternoon, with that selfsame stockade fence dead in her sights. Well, she was here for that and for gathering up some more rusty hunks of rusty rust for another iron run sometime probably next week. I mean, duh.

So she started banging away at the fence pieces, and hacking off the weeds and overgrowth with the manual weedwhacker (basically this blade-ish thing on the end of a stick), and yanking up the posts all by herself, and filling in some holes and smoothing things out, and getting the ubiquitous pile of rusty iron out of there for the above-mentioned scrap run, and moving some rotten lumber into the 'fill' pile (or the 'to be burned later' pile) nearby. I don't know whether to credit the energy drink(s) or if it's some kind of working-out-of-issues thing, but hey; and all the while she was being watched by this little guy:



Though he's only eight weeks on this Earth, little Aleister Meowley instinctively knows to give Tara a very wide berth when she's 'working.' Smart guy.

After clearing most of that out, even though the afternoon was wearing on, she then set her sights on an old dead birdcherry tree nearby, one of several in the yard that will need to come down.

Alas, energy drink(s) and repressed anger were not enough in this case. Because it turns out that our little electric chainsaw just couldn't handle the pressure here at the Best Little Hoardhouse in Massachusetts, and after getting about halfway through the hardwood trunk, well, let's just say the poor little thing died a noble, if really stinky, death:



But she didn't let that stop her, and so instead turned her sights to mowing the lawn, while I took the kitten safely inside to 'help' me with the dishes; and even though the area where the Saab corral was was mostly jewelweed or goldenrod or brambles and not in actual point of fact grass, still, once mowed and somewhat evened out it looked a lot better. Like, holy cow. Here are some befores and afters, so you can get the gist.

The before from the north, taken just a day or so ago, after we got the convertible Saabs out:



And the after:



The before, from a better angle:



And the after:



And here's a shot taken from near the property line on the north edge, looking towards the shed:



Look at all that lovely expanse of lawn, or soon-to-be lawn. Very nice. It will need a bit more smoothing out, as there are some ruts and low spots, but still. Aside from Caroline the blue Saab and the stack of fence pieces, both of which won't stay here, you'd never know there was a little mini-junkyard of cars there just the other day. Sweet.

The goal now is to get those fenders and stuff to the left of the shed above junked or consolidated/put away, so that Tara can then mow all the way around that building, which, we were realizing, is something we've never seen done here.

Nice bit of progress, isn't it?

More Progress

Goodness, look who showed up on the doorstep this morning—it's our marvellous Mr. Rusty Jones, here to once again help us bid adieu to rusty cars! Oh Rusty. You make my little heart pitter-patter so.

So there we were in the actual morning, holy cow (I believe I have mentioned once or twice that Tara and I generally keep vampiric hours, yes?) watching the junk guy haul off two more rusty piles of rusty rust, one of which was even, I think, originally actually painted rust-red. Mind you, this was a different junk guy than the one from the place that couldn't be bothered to call Tara back last week. Oh well. Their loss.

Or ours, which, totally like HOORAY. Mr. Junk Guy Mark II took both the old reddish Saab 95 and the Général de Gaulle Citroën DS (or what was left of that old Citroën DS, anyway, which wasn't an awful lot). That's right. Both. At the same time. Voilà:



There was some concern as to whether that back driver's side tire on the Saab would hold air; that proved completely grounded. Luckily it wasn't too far and only had to go across town; still, it made a noise, let me tell you, which we could hear even in the hermetically sealed compartment of Tara's new Bug. Junk Guy driving the ramp truck either didn't know or didn't care. I mean, not that it really matters, as it was strictly a one way trip from whence it shall never return.

Being a different junk place this one did things their own way, and didn't quote us a price first; instead they paid by the ton, which, surprisingly enough even with most of that Citroën hacked off or crumbled to rust came to more than two tons, after they weighed it on the big drive-on scale. We were impressed; driving up we didn't think they would realistically top one and a half together.

So that means that if we wanted to count the cars removed as iron hauled (which, in essence, they are), that would add something like another seven tons of iron taken out of here since last June. Cripes.

And by the way the number of cars left to get out of here is now in the teens, which, though it may not sound impressive, is when you remember that at its zenith (nadir) there were seventy-eight of the damned things here.

Since we got all that over and done with around noon, Tara then figured we had plenty of time to light some more stuff on fire, especially since she had been over the other day and hacked up some of that downed apple tree over by the shop. And while that may not sound like hoard-related cleanup, and while it isn't actually my father's fault it fell down, still, it is blocking something that is. Honestly, my father really did hoard just about anything. That included piles of rocks.

I know, I know, this is New England: we got rocks. I hear though they are originally native to Canada, having been introduced with the glaciers. I have double-dug many a garden here and hit many a rock; and I have been known to stop, shake my fist in a northerly direction, and cry, Damn you, Canada!

And no, we're not exactly sure where this particular pile of rocks came from. It is, however, up near the road with a couple of piles of dirt, which I'm pretty freakin' sure were once piles of sand from the road that someone from The Town didn't know what to do with; when my father said he'd take them they happily dumped it there. Enabling fuckers.

Where they sat, and still sit, of course.

Anyway that apple tree is in the way of accessing those rocks which we'd like to use to finish the stone wall by the back of the garage; so the tree has to go. And yes, there will be rental equipment involved. Some of those rocks are big.

So those bits of the apple tree went on the pyre, as well as anything vaguely brush-like within arm's-reach (or saw's-reach) of Tara, including a good deal of the overgrowth on the pile of dirt in the back by the shed, which is also slated to get moved when we rent the Bobcat.

When that had all burned to cinders, and after a bit of tidying (and the discovery, of course, of more bits of rusty rust within the leaf-mould), we sat back and stared. Because there was so much empty space.

Here are all four panoramas of the area, in order, so you (we) can get a real feel for all we got done:









And the ones taken from the south:









You can see the grass is getting greener in that last shot.

Why yes, I'd say it definitely is.

Points of View

When Tara came by the other day she brought a CD of old pictures of the yard that she'd scanned in; today I walked around outside, to get some pictures from the same points of view for comparison.

When I look at those old photos I am actually shocked. Which you really think I wouldn't be; after all, I lived here, and in fact was living here when most of these pictures were taken. I really should remember it.

I said in a comment a couple posts down that I've blocked it out, how much of a horror this yard was, but that's not quite it; it's that, back then, I didn't know how to see. Not, even, that I was inured to it or had simply grown used to it, though that is probably part of it, but that I was unable to see that it was wrong in the first place. Or rather, I was unable to see the degree to which it was wrong, abnormal, sick, even. Because I did know it was fucked up at the time, even if I was nowhere near being able to articulate how fucked up. Never mind why it was.

And if I'm not remembering the yard as that bad, then I'm not giving myself (and Tara) anywhere near enough credit for cleaning it up. And yes, part of that is that it has been fairly gradual; this has taken us more than a decade now. Well, I say 'us'; really in the first few years, back when our father was still here, it was Tara doing most of the work, at least as far as the cars went, since she for some reason had the patience to deal with Dad. Or maybe that's just another way of not giving myself enough (in this case, any) credit, who knows.

It is always good to pause for a moment in the middle of a project and see how far you've come. Though, really, we are well past the mid-point, I think, at least as the cars go. If there were seventy-eight here originally, and there are only ('only,' ha) twenty-one left, then we are 73% of the way through that part; and as far as the pure junk goes, I'd guess from the pictures that the percentage is about the same, if not greater. We've even made some major strides with the indoor spaces, like the garage, and though the shop is still pretty full, stuff has been moving out of there. So we're, really, I'd guess, something like three quarters done. And that's pretty damned amazing.

So let's see what it looked like then and today. Here's one looking towards the back yard, taken in September of 2001. This was yet another pile of wood, this time piled up and around a large rock. On the left there is a mound of dirt, left over from I'm not sure what, perhaps digging the foundation for the garage in the sixties. When we were kids it had been there for so long that the trees there were big enough to build a tree house in. Said trees are now long gone and the pile itself flattened and used to fill in what was ostensibly a pond my father had dug out, but was mostly an overgrown, damp marshy spot intermittently filled with runoff from the road.



And today. That haphazard pile of wood on that giant mound of charcoal will shortly be burned, just like the rest of it.



Here's the back of the garage again; this is a slightly different picture than one Tara has run before, from May 2001.



And today. Incidentally I put those walls in myself a few years back. One of my strategies upon moving here was to claim previously carred-up and junked-up spaces for new gardens. That way my father couldn't just put another car back in the same spot.



Here's one looking towards the shop, also from May 2001. I'm pretty sure Tara was standing on something, probably a bus roof, to get this. I guess it held; honestly I'm a little surprised.



And today. It's not quite taken from the same angle, but it's close. There are still several Beetles over there, the damned things.



And then one taken from a little further over to the south, and pointed at what were the pen and the pond, from late October 2002:



And today:



That's quite a lot of empty grassy ground exposed, isn't it? And still, I look at that and think What an impossible mess.