Junk yards are no place for a car guy

Growing up in south Jersey, I remember going by the local junk yards and trying to catch a glimpse of what cars might be there as my parents sped past in our Datsun. A small one nearby always had a rusty late-'60s Olds Toronado living out front among the weeds, and an even bigger yard had a pieced-together '68 Camaro perched on the roof, complete with a yellow rattle-can paint job.

To my young mind, there was all kinds of automotive gold behind those fences. Why, I'll bet there are old Corvettes, Porsches, and probably a Ferrari or two languishing in a back corner, just ready to be plucked out and restored!

When I turned 18, I set out one day in search of parts for our trusty Datsun, and was allowed to wander through my first junk yard. It was nothing like I'd imagined. I'd peruse rows and rows of milquetoast family sedans stacked on top of each other, and when I would stumble across the occasional cool car, it had been smashed nearly beyond recognition, and stripped bare by automotive vultures who had been feeding on it for years. It was really quite sad. 

But joy returned to me when I spotted a blue 1982 Datsun 310, just like mine. It even seemed to be in great shape, and I was hoping it had the parts I needed. Unfortunately, it was 12 feet above me, stacked on top of three other cars. A well-meaning employee with a forklift kindly asked if I'd like a better look and, upon seeing my smile, proceeded to punch two holes in the side of the pretty Datsun with the forks, pluck it from the top of the pile and drop it to the ground at my feet, bending the unibody frame in the process. The poor little blue car lay broken and battered in front of me. I lifted the hatchback, didn't find what I was looking for, but thanked the forklift operator for his efforts. He smiled and waved as he picked up the car, and put it in the crusher. Twenty seconds later, it was an unrecognizable blue slab of metal.

It felt like I'd left my heart in that car.

I've always had a personal attachment to cars, and while I've never been one to assign names to them, I often find myself thinking back on what the car and I have been through together. I'd look at the back corner of my old Datsun and remember it being dragged along an embankment when my father fell asleep on a family road trip to North Carolina. I'd look at my friend's Cadillac, and remember driving with the windows down and grinning while we'd blast it down a back road. I'd sit in my old Mazda3, and remember the day I brought it home from the dealership - the only brand-new car I've ever purchased. 

As I walk through junkyards, I can't help but look at the mangled, destroyed cars, and wonder what memories still lie in their chassis. Maybe that green car had an epic road trip. Or maybe someone got their first kiss in the back seat of the red one. One day, someone was overjoyed to have purchased that silver one brand-new, and drove it home full of pride. It makes me sad to think that, like most scrapped cars, they will eventually be destroyed, and forever erasing those automotive memories.

I recently had to make a trip to a local junk yard, a massive facility out by the railroad tracks. It's much better organized than the ones I grew up with, but the cars seem to be more mangled now than I remember them being in my younger days. I find myself slightly relieved when I stumble upon a Triumph Spitfire and an Alfa Romeo Spider of the same vintage keeping company in a back corner. But alas, they're both stripped bare, the Alfa's windshield frame has been cut off and thrown aside, and the rest of it has been there so long, it is nearly unrecognizable.

I try to remind myself that many of these cars will be recycled into new ones, ready to start new memories for their owners. But the romantic in me still weeps over the carcasses, and can't help but feel sorry for the now-faceless spirits languishing among the rows. 

As for my Datsun, it blew an engine and eventually found its way to the same scrapyard as that blue Datsun on the pile. I was glad I wasn't home when they came to pick it up. It turns out all those memories were only worth a total of $75.

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On a side note, my favorite junkyard relic was an old Pontiac Fiero GT that was in a yard in New Jersey. The car had obviously burned to the ground from an engine fire. However, the yard decided to keep the entire car because the driver's door was absolutely perfect.

Holladay's Used Auto Parts, where Christian found the little, blue Datsun.

Photo courtesy of Google Maps

"Engine Heat"

If you're in the Northern Hemisphere, you're well aware that it's the middle of Winter. Whether you live in Barrow, Alaska or southern California, you're pretty aware of the fact that it's a bit colder this time of year.

And as anyone who knows me can attest, I truly, sincerely hate Winter. Not just a passing, "Ugh, it's cold out today." I tend to repeat my mantra of, "STUPID WINTER!" for about six months of the year, even when it's not even in season.

Fortunately, modern automobile heating systems are really quite efficient, despite their relative simplicity of design that has gone somewhat unchanged for the last 70 years or so.

It's a simple matter of filling an engine with a water/coolant mix, letting it circulate through the engine to not only cool it, but capture the radiant heat from the combustion chambers. This heated water, in turn, runs through a heat exchanger under your dashboard, and creates heat when you turn on the vent system in your car and allow a fan to blow that hot air through the vents and onto your toesies.

I especially like it when the car's been warmed up a while, and some of that heat finds its way into the car's interior. My friend, Jake, once referred to it as, "Engine Heat."

Sometime after college, he and I were driving around in his old blue Cutlass sedan. We were marvelling at the chilly air that night, and he turned to me and said, "Don't worry - we'll have Engine Heat soon." Within a few moments, the car started warming up nicely. "How AWESOME is Engine Heat, man???" he proclaimed, as he looked at me with an excited, wild-eyed stare.

We both cracked up into hysterics, but to this day, I don't hit that heater button without thinking about Jake's Engine Heat comment.

On the flip side of the Engine Heat coin is my friend, Brian. He grew up in Iowa, which gets bitterly awful cold winters. For a time, he drove an old Subaru, which he'd purchased in late Fall. "The car ran GREAT," he told me once. "Except it never had heat."

But Brian was easy-going (and not mechanically minded), and simply bundled up to compensate for the lack of heat. One day, however, the car started acting funny, so he pulled it into a service station.

"You're out of antifreeze," said the mechanic. "I'll put some in for you."

Magically, the old Subaru suddenly had heat! It turned out that the bitterly cold weather was enough to keep the engine cool. "I just loved it that much more after that," Brian recalls.

But complain as I might, I'm often glad that I don't have to deal with the heating system in my parents' VW Beetle. They had a late '50s model painted gold that they used to run around Kansas City, Missouri in the late '60s. They loved the car, but often reminded me that no matter how cold I thought it was outside, I never had to scrape frost from the INSIDE of the windshield like they did.

Fortunately here on the east coast, it's been fairly warm the last few days. I've even had the windows down, and the sunroof open to glean a bit of Vitamin D from the ambient sunlight. And it feels like any day now, I should be able to pack away the ice scraper.

My only fear is that getting excited about warmer weather will only mean that there's more to come. In fact, there was a report of snow for tonight.

Maybe next February 2nd, I'll try poking my head out of the sunroof, like Punxsutawney Phil. If you hear me complain about my nose freezing up, expect six more weeks of Winter.

Either way, expect me to keep complaining until about May!

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