A friend of mine just told me about a farmer who's got some 200 cars of various vintages on his property. My friend owns a few rental homes and a moving company, and 7 or 8 vehicles, himself, and asked me to look up the value of 1987 Jaguar convertible, because the leather went moldy inside - he had one of those quality vinyl car wraps on it, after he had it restored, and got too busy to use it. He had 'Storage Insurance' on it, so our Provincially-owned Insurance company is trying to see how to deal with it. I mentioned that I wanted some hub caps for my wagon and he told me that we should go see his farmer friend next week! Like, does a chicken have lips, do little bears crap in the woods, do fish procreate in water, AM I GOING!!!! Anyway, back to the String too short to use: I finally found rust on my Mexican beauty. When I examined the driver's front fender rim around the wheel well, I scraped off some flaky paint and oops - I poked through the dirt and muck built up over 28 years. Well what to do? The Canadian donor fenders were toast, especially there, so I looked at other parts of the donor car's sheet metal, and then found some workable galvanized from an old stove backplate, that I had kept for a rainy day! I shaped it to fit inside the good rim and even notched out the fastener tab (for the inner PVC wheel well piece). A couple of pop-rivets to hold it while I braze it in and bingo. I am a responsible pack-rat, only junk I can use in the next 3 years! Not 200 cars in my yard, but it proves that size does matter! The bigger the closet, the more stuff goes in! I found a lot of little things like that, doing this restoration. A broken seat spring that I replaced with one from an old lazyboy seat. Some D-rings that were too rusty to re-use (they are hard to find here, and the upholstery shops don't like parting with their inventory). I broke a couple of nylon setting blocks for the windshield and rear side glass, and saved some nylon chunks from a an old cutting board - couldn't find those either, locally and I wasn't going to spend $10 on freight for a $0.75 part! How the saying came about. My grandad was a member of the Canadian Northwest Mounted Police back in the early 1900's. My dad was a wireless Air-gunner in WWII. Dad was a messy packrat, my gramps was an orderly packrat - had a nice little tinkerer's workshop in his basement, everything labelled and my dad would always go to his shop to see what gramps had in new junk. Well gramps labelled all his jars of nuts and bolts and bits of indescribable stuff, and just put in a chunk of paper inside the jar with the name showing out. But knowing my dad's curiosity, he put one large mayonnaise jar full of bits of yarn, string, thin copper wire and a full body label, turned to the back of the shelf so the label or contents couldn't be seen. Gramps and I were upstairs having a coffee and out comes this ROAR of laughter from the basement workshop. My dad found the jar! The label said "FOR BILL - Pieces of string too short to use! - Leave my junk alone!" Dad went home after whining that his ribs hurt too much from laughing, and for over a month, went through all of his junk and sorted, labelled and catalogued it ALL. When gramps passed on, dad gave the eulogy, and told the story. Not a dry eye or tear in the place. We aren't Irish, but you would have thought it was comedy hour, an Irish Wake! He was fondly remembered and the laughter really spiked when dad produced the jar. Many of gramps' old Mountie pals attended, because of the fond memories. They left with one more!
That gave me a chuckle ! My Grandma is a pack rat and several years ago we clean up her basement in one weekend. I could not believe the amount of stuff that was found and most of it was just useless widgets!
The grandparents come from a day when the cars were cheap, the stores closer to home and 2 great depressions. I don't think my dad ever threw a watch out. When I was 6 or 7, I had to repeat kindergarten because I could only speak French. Well, I got bored one day and dunked the blond girl's pigtails in my inkwell. I didn't know she was the Police Chief's daughter, honest! About 8 o'clock, the chief comes over in uniform. He was my dad's pal and the only guy in town who could beat my dad at cribbage. I figured it was a friendly visit, until I saw my little classmate hugging his leg and sticking her tongue out at me. I too started to hug my dad's leg. Well the chief was trying hard to be serious and my dad was holding back too! But all of a sudden, these two giants turned to me! And I was scared to death! Dad said that my allowance was cut off (I didn't have one anyway, but I didn't understand the word either!) and that I'd have to sort out two big 5 gallon pails of old nails, screws and bolts to pay him back for the cost of the hair-do this little brat was going to get! Man! When you're 6 or 7 years old, those pails are so huge! I don't know where he got all those nails and hardware or even why he bothered collecting them! It took me at least 2 months of prime summertime to sort those out! I met her older brother in the fall and we became best friends. He said she kind of liked me, and I said 'Too phoquing bad!" It was hard going to his house and meeting her again and again, because she reminded me of all the mischief I missed that summer.:banghead3:
1st off...Norm...you are a constant amusement for me!!...you crack me up 2nd off...i am so in touch with your gramps...i'm the same sorta pack rat only add in cars ...and anything to do with cars...xmas...toys...music.. ...ah hell....just about everything ...I'm sick......... when i leave this planet...there will be articles in the paper!! the title will just be ...."WTF????"
Thanks Rev! My dad's brother told me he wants one of two options when he dies: Bury him face-down so the world can kiss his A$$ goodbye! OR Cremate him, because good ash is hard to find!
