JUNKYARD LIFE

CHRONICLES (at the bottom)

Bamboo
Bicycles and the Flatbed
Fish Guts
Gypsies and Jet Engines
The Legend of Uncle Pumpkin
Where There's Smoke

THE GALLERY

Bamboo

It all started innocently enough—a handful of bamboo sprouts, waist-high, planted on our “front lawn”, meaning the 10-foot stretch of lumpy grass between Bristol Road and the fence that our neighbors made us erect due to whatever the legal equivalence of unsightliness is. That was around 1995. Today a 3-story tall bamboo forest dominates the landscape—Crouching Tiger Hidden Junkyard.

I’ll never forget the way the canopy swayed during Superstorm Sandy; tip-to-tip, one individual plant covered the area of our house. The bamboo took out entire sections of our fence…but why have a fence when you can have an impenetrable living wall?  Amazingly each plant stayed firmly rooted despite the strength of one of the greatest storms the east coast has seen in living memory. This is because, I’ve come to learn, that there really aren’t any individual bamboo plants, but rather the plants are a network joined entirely by the same root structure. In other words, a bamboo forest is really one big super-plant. This is what lends the green bamboo hulk its strength and tenacity. It’s what allows a shoot to grow so rapidly—up to 3 feet per day in fact. The energy captured by the leaves of one shoot can be transferred through the roots to a sprout quite far away. Bamboo is like the Borg from Star Trek—strength through connectivity and numbers.

On the surface, there are hundreds and hundreds of shoots on our property. And they’ve become quite the nuisance. Trying to maintain the bamboo is a full-time job. I say trying because it can’t really be maintained by conventional means. There is only one really effective final solution for bamboo and that is to call in the helicopters with napalm. But if you can’t afford Agent Orange, you can attempt to at least contain its tentacles from spreading. The way to do this is to dig a trench, 2 feet deep, entirely surrounding the bamboo beast and then fill the trench with rocks or concrete.

If you don’t do that, you may win a battle every now and then but you will never win the war. The organism has breached through our fence and begun to take over our actual front lawn. Despite our attempts to maintain it, its tendrils sprout from the ground like the heads of the Hydra. I’ve seen it pierce through a high-density plastic traffic cone, and one even penetrated the belly of our upside-down fiberglass rowboat, proving that a sprout doesn’t need light to grow due to the energy transfer previously discussed. 

Yes, the war on bamboo is a losing proposition, but we try anyway. Our standard operating procedure involves lopping the shoots, loading up our pickup truck Old Black Betty, and schlepping and off-loading behind the garden out back. Then we wait until summer. By then the shoots will have dried out and it won’t take much for a spark to turn into a furious blaze. Internally, a bamboo shoot consists of hollowed out chambers. When put to the torch, the heat causes the air trapped inside to expand, and the pressure makes the chambers explode! To prevent flashbacks of Vietnam from the neighbors—or preemptive Fourth of July celebrations—a controlled burn is recommended.

Even so, once a bamboo shoot is decapitated, and its body burned, the stem stays firmly rooted in the ground, a carbon-fiber sword pointing straight up to the sky. Lop off the heads of a few dozen shoots and now you have a zombie army functioning as a skirt wall, defending its living cousins.  

I’ll never forget what happened once during a standard-issue blizzard during the winter of 2011. Right smack in the middle of it, we got a knock on the door—an unusual occurrence considering the circumstance. It was a police officer. He told us that our bamboo was blocking Bristol Road and that we had to take care of it so that the snow plows could do their job. Sure enough, the 30-foot-tall bamboo had slouched entirely across the thoroughfare under the weight of a few thick feet of white powder. So, following direct orders, I grabbed the loppers and got to lopping for about an hour as snow poured down from the heavens. While performing this vital function for the benefit of Bucks County, I remember how quiet and peaceful it was with the rest of society tucked comfortably away in their dwellings. I also remember my internal combustion engine working full steam and taking off a layer with the snow pouring down. Even in the middle of winter, when most flora take a good long vacation, the bamboo was putting me to work.

I have nothing but respect and admiration for this venerable creation of Mother Nature.

Bicycles and the Flatbed

For over a decade, a pile of bicycles grew around a 20-foot-long, 8-wheeled faded matte-green sleeping giant flatbed truck that served as a background set piece on the junkyard stage. When Superstorm Sandy came to visit, aluminum cans and other debris flew around like flocks of sparrows. The two-story-tall bamboo forest rocked violently in every which direction, its tips nearly touching the ground—amazingly not breaking or de-rooting to join the Wrath of God—taking out entire sections of our front fence… while the dormant flatbed snored stoically like an ancient Olmec grounded in a thousand years of overgrowth.

This wasn’t always the case, so I’ve been told. This relic-to-me had its glory days well before my lifetime, schlepping two-digit tons of this and that, here to there, there to here, then and then again. The legends quickly fade, but let it be known that the flatbed hauled ass before it went out to pasture.

One day, I returned home from college break to find a dark void left in the flatbed’s wake. There must have been some salvageable parts under its hood, and the old man sold it to a guy for “more than scrap”. But not to worry. In a moon’s turn, the junk tides washed over the blank space, footprints on the beach filled with a new froth of shells, seaweed, and other junky detritus.

We picked the bicycles out of peoples’ curbside trash collections and tacked them around the truck like tartar on a tooth. Some of them could actually be ridden for a few yards, and they all had at least one or two working parts, but generally they were pretty bent out of shape. I figured they would end up in an outgoing light iron container and that would be the end of it, but instead they just kept cropping up over the years like barnacles on a blue whale.

I was in middle school when September 11th happened. The terror years that followed included a resurgence of “militarized operations” with Iraq — as well as the associated wall of conservatism and curtain of paranoia which veiled my formative years. Believe it or not, these global forces determined the destinies of our bicycles when my high school put on a bicycle donation drive to support war-torn children in the Middle East.

The old man blew his bugle horn and my brother and I filled the truck up with a pile of bicycles higher than the twin towers themselves, a mountainous gnarl of steel and aluminum, spokes and handlebars and pedals and frames and cables and forks and gears jutting out every which way, tied down with amateur-knotted ropes.

Upon arrival to the high school parking lot with the first load of bicycles, we were greeted as heroes. Other families donated one, two, maybe three bicycles at most. It was like bringing a watermelon to a grape party. Little did they know that we would be returning another hour later, and on the second trip, people didn’t know what to think. What sort of people keep such a large inventory of dilapidated bicycles in stock? But alas, the third time around, we were surely up to no good. Derelicts? Thieves? Pacifists? Enemies of the State?

It is nice to think that those bikes that we rescued from the garbage trucks made it across the Atlantic and provided a mode of transportation for children in a “third world” quite difficult to imagine. What I can certainly recall from memory—and this is satisfaction enough—was seeing the looks on those peoples’ faces, right then and there in the parking lot of Central Bucks High School East (Go Patriots!), each time the Wechsler boys rolled up in their pickup truck with a load of bicycles that blotted out the sun.

Fish Guts

Towards the beginning of summer, we would pull up our white 1982 Ford F250 towards the loading area behind Heller’s Seafood Market, just off of route 611 (one of the two crossroads of my hometown). Two grimy, good-spirited men shoveled fish guts into the truck bed until it was full, and we drove home.  

The operation proceeded as such: first, my brother Sam and I dug about 8 ditches in our garden, each a few feet deep and a few wide, maybe 30 feet long. Then, we would put a wheelbarrow next to the lowered tailgate, from where the old man transferred the load via rake and shovel. Once the wheelbarrow was full, Sam and I would take turns pushing it towards the ditches while the other assisted over roots, divots, and generally sodden turf. We then emptied the contents into the ditch until the truck was depleted. After a few trips back and forth from Heller’s, once the ditches were full with fish guts, we would then drive to Cheltenham to receive a free load of mulch delivered breezily by a front-end loader. We then essentially repeated the previous process, covering the ditches with the mulch. Compared to the smell of the fish guts, the mulch’s aroma was that of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. Indeed, the fishy smell lingered on our persons after days of vigorous scrubbing, and it never truly dissipated from the truck even until its dying days.

Boy, Sam and I hated that work. It was hard work, particularly for pre-pubescents. The Pennsylvania summer heat is a heavy bake that flirts with triple digits and fills with humidity to the brink of torrential downpour. Subtropics indeed. I remember the wide-eyed blank stares of the hundreds of fishes gazing into the world beyond and thinking how they looked the same dead as they do alive. Saturated in sweat, I envied those dead fish for their rest. In retrospect, I appreciate the discipline and grit that our old man instilled in us. It was certainly the exception to the rule in our quaint upper-middle class rural suburbia. Plus, our garden produced behemoth crops including watermelons, pumpkins, butternut squash, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, potatoes, onions, okra, eggplant, rhubarb, strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries. We’d also place various shells around our plum and quince trees as a provision of calcium, and those trees produced bountifully as well, sourcing our made-from-scratch pies. 

We would set aside a few drums of fish guts and schlep them down to Long Beach Island, New Jersey, reeking acridly for the two-hour drive sans air conditioning (again, more character building). Every morning we would lay a few crab traps, and by evening they were filled like clockwork. We’d pull in the traps and dad would get boiling. My small hands could deftly navigate the inner ventricles of those rock crabs, and with age I could produce more torque to break the shells. Every now and then, our hands got cut by the ancient crustacean’s natural defense system, effective even in the afterlife, and the metallic taste of blood washed down the salty buttery taste when I licked my fingers. We basically survived off of crab for summers on end; we were crab people through and through.

I have a traumatic memory of trying to reel in a crab trap by myself only to be overcome by its weight being pulled by the tide and flung off the dock, screaming and scraping helplessly against the slimy wooden pillars until the old man came running, lending a hand. I remember emptying the crabs into buckets for transport into the kitchen, and every now and then a maverick crab would get loose; this was always exciting, as Sam and I would attempt to corral it into a bucket, facing off in a precarious miniature-sized bullfight. The crab escaped about half the time, plunging over the dock in a one-yard, one-second plunge to survival that was epic from an eight-year-old’s perspective, let alone the crab’s.

And the circle of life continued, all thanks to the fish guts.

Gypsies and Jet Engines

Growing up in the junkyard, things would come and go. The jet engines were a main attraction for a while until the gypsies came around. Each was roughly twenty feet long and three feet in diameter, chock full of aluminum, high temp alloys, and possibly even some titanium (so said the old man). They shone brilliantly in the sun, smooth rounded points at each end, while veins and switches traced out a circumference worthy of the Millennium Falcon. They sat there rather stoically, moving every few years depending on the ebbs and flows of the yard. 

A few decades passed until the gypsies rolled up unannounced in a spotless white Dodge Ram, with their black hair slicked back and gold chains around their necks. And who would you guess was right behind them in an unwashed 1988 Cadillac sedan? Why, it was old Perry of Temple Enterprises, all the way up from Port Richmond (North Philly) to broker the deal. My father emerged unto the porch, and the two old Jews began to dance.

This was art. Baryshnikov, Bobby Fischer, and George Gershwin rolled into one act. It was dialogue that only 100+ years of combined haggling experience could produce. Bellies spilling over belts like silverback gorillas that could easily cut back on a banana or two. Unkempt salt and pepper hair, three-day-old stubble, and cavernous wrinkles served as résumés, each with an executive summary headlining “last of a dying breed”. I had the pleasure to witness the show for free. And by the end of the week, the jet engines were gone.

Like every deal we’ve ever done with Perry, he later claimed it to have been a loss for Temple. That didn’t stop him from continuing to do business with us of course. I do know this: my old man bought those jet engines from the government for twenty bucks (plus $200 shipping) and sold them for $3,000. Taking inflation into account, it can still be said with certainty that it wasn’t a loss for us.

But those jet engines were one of our showcase pieces… not to mention a fun playground. I feel blessed now, thinking back on it, to have witnessed their culminating hoorah. Bravo!   

The Legend of Uncle Pumpkin

Uncle Pumpkin showed up to our property once or twice a year throughout the early 1990’s. Uncle Pumpkin was a hero. Dad never told us that he we coming—as that was the old man’s general style of in-the-moment living—but when my brother and I recognized the waistline of Uncle Pumpkin, which was impressively robust in circumference, the trumpets blazed. Uncle Pumpkin was the king video-gamer and he would beat the hardest levels of Super Mario World, relieving days of fraternal tension and angst. These memories form most of my recollection of Uncle Pumpkin, as he died of a heart attack somewhere in the mid 90’s. It was the first death of someone that I personally knew and cared about.

As years ticked by, I learned more about Uncle Pumpkin. For one thing, his name was Dave Dorner. Dave Dorner operated a used electronics store on Canal Street in downtown Manhattan. Every now and then, he would escape the heat of the big city and visit us country folk.  One landmark on our property was an Oldsmobile station wagon that was propped up about a yard by a tree trunk that was growing through its hood. One day I asked Dad where the station wagon came from, and he responded without missing a beat, “Your Uncle Pumpkin dropped it off here for a weekend. That was 20 years ago”. The car was scrapped in a light iron container around 2011.

The legend grew posthumously. For one thing, my mother’s wedding ring was acquired through a trade with Uncle Pumpkin in the back of a limousine in New York City. Uncle Pumpkin had a briefcase with a selection of diamond rings, and my mother had the pick of the litter. In exchange, Uncle Pumpkin received an ice cream truck, which, oddly enough, he never picked up, as it is still sitting on our property to this day.

All of this makes more sense when it is revealed that Uncle Pumpkin was loosely “connected”. In other words, he had “friends”. One of his friends was Carlo Zilli. Carlo sold Dad loads of secondary iron re-bar back in the day. Part of the deal included cases of wine imported directly from Italy. I’ve heard that Dad would show up to parties with an entire case. My Uncle Bob reports that it wasn’t exactly of the highest quality, but nobody cared, and everybody drank it.

There is little doubt in my mind now that both the station wagon and the wedding ring were “hot commodities”. I see the ring as an appropriate symbol for my parents’ union. My mother wore it on her right hand for many years and then had it made into a necklace.

Growing up, when the fall harvest came, my father gave my brother and I pumpkins from our garden. The pumpkins had our names sketched out in tan ALL-CAPS protruding out of the orange surface. Now I know that my father had previously carved out the names a few weeks in advance, and the pus of the pumpkin naturally emerged and hardened. At the time though, when we asked how on Earth this could happen, he explained that it occurred by magic, and, being the time before Google (B.G.), we were forced to accept this explanation with wonderment and glee. A similar feeling is now aroused when I think about Uncle Pumpkin and the age-old way that certain deals and relationships were enacted before the digital age reigned in an era of transparency. Stories emerge from a seedy, pulpy core and harden over the surface of time. I accept these stories with reverence and I’ll admit, a bit of jealousy.

Where There's Smoke

Stevie Wonder could tell if I’ve been home recently. This is because a fire burns in our fireplace almost every day, and everything inside the house, including articles of clothing, gets saturated with smoke such that the scent is carried for some time. No matter how many times we paint over the fireplace mantel, it is always scorched black from the billows of smoke that pour into the living room. Forget about smoke detectors in our house.

Also forget about garbage trucks; they’ve never come. Any discarded paper goes straight into the fireplace, organic material is composted, and metal is recycled. The plastic we generate is enough to fit into a plastic grocery bag, which is deposited into a public receptacle at the supermarket or gym. The cost savings of declining garbage hauling service has paid for a semester or two of college.

However, having an interior incinerator has had its drawbacks. There was the constant inhalation of particulate matter created from incomplete combustion, but what set us apart is that my old man would burn transformers in order to melt the adhesive that holds together the copper cables and steel bands. Although my brother and I have advised against burning electrical equipment in our fireplace for years, it wasn’t until recently that the practice has ceased. Transformers often contain Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB’s), an odorless chlorine compound, which, if inhaled or ingested, is a potent endocrine disrupter and neurotoxin. Perhaps this is why both Sam and I are experiencing hair loss. It is a convenient explanation for all of our imperfections. On the other hand, burning copper created an extraordinary green blaze. It was beautiful. 

Growing up, my father would order my brother and I to schlep and stack logs onto our porch. It was another disciplinary measure, a team-building exercise that we were always glad to be over with. We eventually learned how to split logs. Today, splitting logs is one of my favorite things to do. There is something cathartic about focusing and releasing the totality of one’s energy into a single point—the tip of a sledge hammer. As one’s muscle mass transfers that energy into the wedge, splitting the log, there is a satisfaction comparable to driving a golf ball and landing on the green. Miss the sweet spot and sparks fly. Injuries are also available for free.

A good fire stimulates all of the senses. The light show alone is better than most of cable TV, and the subtleties of the orchestra produced by combustion are unpredictably amazing. The warmth is life itself, and then of course there’s the smell… there’s something ancient about the smell of a burning fire, something that brings me to a familiar, peaceful place. When people ask me what my father is up to, generally speaking, I have some difficulty in explaining that he is perfectly content making a fire and watching it burn for hours on end. He seems to be in a zenned out, holy place. I hope to eventually achieve that state of being, although I don’t currently have the patience for it, and I wonder if modern times will ever allow for it.

I remember a chimney fire we had in the mid-nineties. It was like the fourth of July bursting over our roof in the middle of a dark winter’s night.

What else is there to say about our fireplace? Some people can’t stand smoke. I was a volunteer firefighter in high school and have been acquainted with a variety of burnt smells. Many forms of exhaust are certainly malicious. But whenever I return to California from a trip home and open my suitcase, the smoke wafts into my nostrils and slaps me with specific nostalgic memories blended with the grander sense that all of my ancestors, going back to the caves, have known the smell and its source.