Automobile Salvage Joy Tx

[BobShirleyAtlantaTx]

My Dad got word of a wrecking yard in Joy and loved me enough to take me as a kid. This was in the early 60’s. Joy was an unincorporated spot in the road miles from anywhere who’s only business was a beer store. The wrecking yard, located a couple of miles from town on a dirt road, a place time had forgot. The owner, a old man had lost his legs in an oil field accident in his youth and used a board with wheels to get around. The cars were mostly from the 20s and early 30s. Big gangster looking automobiles and there was a barn filled several feet high all kinds of parts. There was some T stuff, but not a lot, but it was a very magical place. I wish I had a picture.

[Rich Eagle]

The forum is a place where many of us can see the magic in what you just described.
I was about 7 or 8 when dad took me to a "junk yard" to pick up some baby buggy wheels for a push car. A white picket fence and a creek running through the place with orderly stacked discards of all types is something I haven't seen since but will never forget.
Thanks for mentioning it.
Rich

[TWrenn]

I remember mom cringing every time dad went to the junkyard. He always came home with either as much as he took, sometimes more. But usually worthwhile. One item was an OLD, and I mean old, gas powered push mower. He used it for 10 years before it blew out a front wheel when he didn't see one of our croquet balls! Man was he mad. It was made of very heavy aluminum.

[Dallas Landers]

I miss those old yards. Tim I know what you meen about dad bringing hime more than he hauled in. We push mowed about two acres of overgrown grass in return for three Simca cars on the property. Dad hauled them to the junkyard and traded for a 53 chevy he wanted plus all the parts to fix her up. When I started driving there was a yard with 20's to early 60's cars about 20 miles away. The kind that had 24" trees between the frame rails. Someone bought it out and crushed it all.

[John kuehn]

There was a local wrecking, salvage yard that was more of a collection of old tractors, cars and pieces of old equipment from years gone by. I went there from time to time growing up looking for T parts since I had a T. I remember seeing old engines from no telling what scattered around.
There wasn’t a lot of T parts but parts and remains of cars from the mid 30’s to the early 70’s.
Several mid. 30’s Fords were still left along with some decent cars from the 50’s.

About 30 years later the owner passed away and his son-in-law got a crusher and several large metal bins and crushed and junked everything in about 2 -3 weeks. It was a sad loss. It’s a empty field now grown up and not to well taken care of.

[TWrenn]

Dallas: cool about ur dad's catches, sad about what that yard did to all those cars. Tisk tisk.

[JohnM]

This was my uncle's business he started after returning from the south pacific as an airplane mechanic in the Army Air Corps. As kids in the early 60's, my siblings and I loved to visit Uncle Ben and play in the "junk yard" Which he always corrected us by saying "it's not junk, it's salvage". He was fairly well known in the collector car scene at that time. Was friends with Ernie Hemmings who also lived in Quincy, (and started Hemmings Motor News) . Although it's been almost sixty years, I often wonder if anyone on this forum has any recollections of him.

Thanks to him, I was "afflicted" at a very early age.

[It's Bill]

Heading south out of Burlington on route 206 in NJ, there used to be the most incredible collection of "salvage" I have ever seen a private individual put together. The guy was a locally famous hermit who built a large teepee out of sheet metal of all kinds in which he lived. He had lots of things including cars, a steam locomotive, a diesel locomotive, passenger compartments from WWII blimps, big machines, all kinds of things. He also erected large signs by the road that displayed his personal take on the state of the world. I used to think he was crazy, but now I bet I could see his point of view! Lovin' old junk, Bill

[ModelT46]

Near Spicer Minnesota in the 1950-60s there was a 40 acre auto junk yard that had been there since the 1930s. The man name was Oscar Palm. He lived in a two room house. There were several out buildings including an old barn. The place was full on pre 1940 auto parts with some complete chassis and some bodies. Oscar told me the reason the cars were all apart was that when WWII came, he was told he could only have 6 complete cars, the rest had to be parts. He then had taken all the cars apart except for 3 or 4. Those had been sold to car collectors by the mid 1950s, but there were thousands of parts, mostly outside. I bought stuff from him and he always gave me a very low price. The reason was that I always paid for everything. Others would load up their trunk with stuff and not pay - and these included known club members. One well known club member wanted me to go and buy stuff he wanted, but he did not dare go back. The last time I went out was in about 1974. When we got there the place was empty, the house open and bare. I stopped at a neighbor's home and was told Oscar ws taken to a hospital the previous year. He told people there he could not live except at his home. He died in a few days. A nephew inherited the place and sold every thing for scrap. It took seven weeks to clear the place out.

[ModelTWoods]

Before Interstate 10 was completed from Houston to San Antonio, Texas in the mid 1960's, the main U.S. highway between the two points was U.S. 90, A small German settled town called Schulenburg is at approximately the halfway point. As a kid, I made many trips by car between those two points with my parents by car. On the west side of Schulenburg, there was a large wrecking yard on the south side of U.S. 90. It was either called Joe's Auto Sales or Joe's Auto Parts, but everyone in that part of Texas, just referred to it as Joe's. Highway 90 was on higher ground than the wrecking yard which was on a downhill slope. The high position of the highway provided a excellent view. Most of the cars, on what must have been 20 to 25 acres, were probably from the 30's and 40's, but some from the 20's could be seen. The late Charles I. Cardiff was the gentleman who I credit spurring my interest as a teenager in Model T's. When restoring his 23 touring car, he needed a new radiator shell. He stopped at Joe's and told Joe what he needed. He followed Joe through the yard to an old barn and hanging on a long spike driven into a framing stud, hung at least 5 or 6 N.O.S. radiator shells. I can't remember Joe's last name, and I couldn't pronounce it if I did. I seem to recall it started with a K, but that's been over 55 years ago. One year after Interstate 10 was completed, which bypassed Schulenburg on the north side of town, I took the old route through town. When I passed by Joe's, only the sign along the highway was still there. Every car that used to be there and every old building on the acreage was gone. I made a local inquiry and found Joe had passed away. His heirs didn't want to be saddled with the real estate taxes, so they had everything crushed. Every time I think about Joe's I beat myself up (mentally) for not taking the time to stop when I had the chance, but, as it is with many things, I thought Joe and his business would be there forever.

[W Austen]

[Dallas Landers]

Oh yes Bill! Mine were never that nice but we lived within walking distance from the town dump. Lots of baby buggy wheels and other good racer parts were drug home by my brother and I. I think I learned the term " road rash" during those early days.
Whats a helmet?

[OilyBill]

My family inherited the grandparents home in 1964. We moved from Butler, Wisconsin the Thiensville, north of Milwaukee. We moved everything ourselves. I remember on the road out of Butler, there was a huge old auto junkyard, but I never paid attention to it at the time. Also on the way out of town were some VERY old houses along a river. As we got nearer to our new home in Thiensville, we passed 2 old blacksmith shops that had been closed for many years, but were still standing and had a lot of stuff in their yards. We drove this route probably 100 times that summer as we moved, one car load at a time.
I never stopped to think until later. If we had visited the junkyard at that time, I am willing to bet there were cars there from the 1930's and probably the 1920's.
During the Ladybird Johnson "Beautify America" effort in the mid 60's, the junkyard got emptied out. The old houses were removed and the entire river area was landscaped, and there were no structures left. Both of the blacksmith shops disappeared and were replaced with vacant lots growing grass. If I had been a little older, I might have gotten a chance to stop in and talk to those people, but they are now gone forever. The auto junkyard still exists, but it has only cars from the 90's in it now.
When I walked through Thiensville during the 1960's, I found a job printer shop that still existed. He had the old platen presses, the huge type boxes with every conceivable group of type to use, all the tools, everything from the 1920's. He was very old at that time. I never went back, and when I returned home after going to school in California in 1978, the shop was empty and cleared out. I was very sad about that, because I had taken a course in printing at the local high school, and met my future wife while we were straightening out our type cases, which was the first assignment in the class. (That is where "mind your p's and q's" came from, setting type!) I knew how to set type, justify lines, and load the old style platen printing presses. Our class was probably the very last to learn how to set type and use a platen press to print stuff. It was very cool and a popular class, but it went away the next year, as they moved on to lithography and modern printing methods. I also learned foundry-work and machining at that high school, as they had a very good technical education department. Now that is all gone, the training shops emptied and sold off. I think the only technical courses they have now deal with computers and 3D printing. 45 years later and I am still making patterns and casting metal. I am glad I learned the skills when I did.
I wish I had poked around more when I was younger. I bet I would have met some very interesting people.

[Novice]

My step Dad worked for Southern Pacific Railroad in Houston as a construction engineer. I remember in the mid fifties He took me over to the Fulton street rail yards. where there were many tracks filled with old steam engines lined up as far as You could see headed to the scrap yard. I got to climb up into a few of the engines and ring the bell and look at all the many gauges and valves I didn't have a clue as to their function. I remember the long throttle leaver hanging in the cab and one or two very large gauges and how high the cab was off the ground. My step Dad would tell the story about His Dad who drove a model T when he was a kid and He never set the spark advance where the engine would run smooth. He couldn't convince Him other wise. So when His Dad wasn't around He fired up the model T and bent the spark leaver so the engine would run smooth but the spark leaver would still be in same notch His Dad liked. "sneaky" but His Dad never caught on. In the late forties when steam locomotives were still common I remember riding to My Grandparents House in the country near Tomball. and from time to time We would see the Orange and silver Sun Set limited with the stainless steel clad steam engine pulling the train on the Houston to LA run along old high way 290. My first Dad would match speed with the locomotive and I would wave to the engineer who always waved back. My Grandfather was a mechanic who worked on every thing including model Ts. But all I ever remember Him driving was Chevrolets and Buicks. He had a 36 Buick He would drive into town for ice cream and supplies. He fired the Buick up and started off. as soon as the wheels made a revolution or two He shifted into 2nd gear a few more revolutions and He bogged it into high gear where it snorted and jerked a little before settling down. He always straddled the center line of the road but with little on coming traffic in the late forties it wasn't a problem. Wish I could have gained a little bit of His model T and mechanical knowledge before he died. Fond memories.