In the last few years my dad shared this gem from his childhood. I asked him to re-familiarize me with the details… Here you go… in my dad’s words –
This is a true story about me when I was in my teens. I enjoyed working in the automobile junkyard and garage that my dad and my uncle owned. It was a partnership that was formed on a handshake without any legal documents and very little money. Hardly anything was organized around the garage where cars were repaired by my Dad, my uncle, our relatives and friends. Needless to say proper tools were difficult to find when needed to do a repair. The tool you needed was usually found on the garage floor where it had been pitched from the previous job. The garage building was built by them with the help of friends and relatives. My uncle Leroy Davis had 6 brothers and 7 sisters, several of them were self taught plumbers, carpenters and roofers. Not being careful they built the garage on a slight hill facing highway #21 (way out North Main Street). When it rained really hard the water would flow thru the garage floor to the street. It seemed as though my world was a joke! On occasion I was given the job of rearranging the location several cars in the junkyard with an old 1948 Dodge truck that had been converted into a wrecker. The back of the truck had a manual winch with a steel cable that could be hooked to the junk car and drug to a new location. All was well with this operation until my Dad decided to sell some of the parts off the wrecker that he thought we did not need.. and we sure needed the money. The first things he sold were the big front seat and the gas tank. I then had to set on a 5 gal bucket to see to drive with my left hand and with my right hand hold steady a 2 gal gas can with a rubber hose hooked from it to the fuel pump so it would run! The next parts he sold were the two front doors. Now I had to really hang on to the steering wheel to keep from falling out when I hit a bump! Then he sold the two front headlights and the generator that supplied the electric power to recharge the battery and run the truck. Working in the daytime I did not need the lights - however the generator being removed sure caused me a lot wasted time and energy! Removing the battery and carrying it a couple hundred feet to the garage to get it recharged every time I needed the wrecker was slightly frustrating to say the least. Here comes Dad with a gallon of gas he has siphoned from a new wreck car for my truck. Dad did not believe in buying much gas or anything else for that matter. He begins telling me that he has a sale for the radiator out of the wrecker. He said it will cause the wrecker to run hot after about 5 minutes of use and I would have to switch it off and do something else for about thirty minutes to let it cool off before i use it again. Now I ask you is this a cost effective way to run a business??? I got myself a job at the Winn-Dixie!!!!
Yours truly,
Wayne
Ps: Three months later, I walked thru the junkyard and I found Dad cutting the frame of the wrecker apart for junk iron to be sold. After I left Dad sold the windshield, tires, wheels, winch and the frame was all that was left. He knew how to get a total return from an investment. Remind me to tell you how he made money going fishing, etc…
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Gem Cutters
November 4th, 2007