Every once in a while one can sense when something good is going to happen. One day near Grant City, Missouri, I experienced this rare premonition.
I had turned onto a lightly traveled state highway west of town when the feeling erupted. Seeing the late ’60’s Riviera behind a house trailer wasn’t it.
Upon cresting a hill, I suddenly saw acres of cars to my left. My curiosity getting the better of me, I turned down the adjacent county road. My curiosity only increased with the half-mile drive to the house, as cars were abundant in that stretch, also.
Upon stopping at the house I knocked on the door and met the owners wife. I told her she lived in paradise. She said my version of paradise differed from hers. Inquiry revealed they had over 2000 mostly intact cars on their property,
including the Chrysler coupe she and her husband had taken on their honeymoon.
The following Friday, I went to visit again, meeting her husband and looking at cars. They had several fields full.
as well as the Thunderbird whose air conditioning had quit. For years he had worked as an equipment operator all over Northern Missouri and Southern Iowa, allowing him to spot vehicles and acquire them cheaply.
We walked over just a portion of his property looking at cars. I saw the ’74 Cadillac ambulance, with 24,000 miles, he had used as a camper, much to the dislike of his sons who found it morbid.
Near his cattle he had his first car, a 1947 Plymouth he had purchased for $15. The ’69 Mustang fastback still retained its straight six although it had hit a tree. As he was getting on in years, he wanted to sell them to bolster his retirement.
Fast forward one year.
He had an auction. The auction even made the front page of the St. Joseph News-Press, a town 70 miles away.
More items appeared as he prepared for the sale. Some obscure pieces emerged, such as a 1929 Windsor.
He also had what was claimed to be a 1918 Elgin, reputedly one of six remaining in existence and perhaps one of the more forlorn looking pieces there that day.
He also had the custom built, such as this Cadillac hearse
and its younger sibling; both were purchased by the same couple.
One person there was buying every Pontiac being offered.
Forward Look Mopars were one the most abundantly represented eras there, with about 20 in all.
I spoke to the man who had purchased one of the ’59 Dodge’s. He had traveled from Wisconsin simply for the chrome over the headlights. Having purchased the entire car for $250, he was having a grand time picking parts. This auction allowed a person to buy the car, take what they wanted, and leave the rest. One person had traveled from Arizona for this auction.
Another person I spoke with about a Hudson was the son of the previous owner. His father sold the Hudson for $50 when the water pump went kaput and he could not find a replacement; it had just sold at auction for $500.
In addition to the multiple Hudson’s, he had acquired many Packard’s
as well as a complete collection of old pickups.
He even had an early ’60’s Checker with a flat-head six under the hood. The variety he had was phenomenal.
Of his roughly 2000 cars, only 500 were offered in the auction. The most expensive car I saw sell was a very solid 1947 Mercury for $2700. Several cars could get no bids, such as a few Pinto’s and a ’69 GTO that was on its roof.
Sadly, most of these cars were either for the very ambitious or for parts. He had some rare and unusual iron, yet his ability to acquire them differed from his ability to store them.
Some had just settled in for a long retirement.
This field reminds me of many of my youthful visits to spend the summer with relatives in Missouri. In this area, it seemed that almost every farm, or some sleepy small town property had lots of old cars just sitting around outside to deteriorate. In my Grandmother’s town of Vandalia, there was one field on the Southwest part of town that had nothing but early-mid ’50s Nash Ramblers, with a Kaiser thrown into the mix. I know that these cars were still there as late as 1982. . . . the tags left on them told there year of abandonment . . .
Come on, Jason – I saw a picture of a 59 Plymouth Fury in the auction flyer – yet you provide us with no picture? This is simply not acceptable, my friend. 🙂
That would have been quite a place to see. I once saw something on a much smaller scale. It was property owned by a guy in a small town in southern Indiana who had owned a Chrysler-Plymouth-DeSoto dealer from the 40s into the late 60s. He would supply his family with good trade-ins. The kids would drive a car until something needed fixed, much like these. Then they parked it and picked out another. Lots of 60s Mopar iron in that field.
As for that last picture, who EVER thought that the roofline on the 2 door 1960-61 Ford was attractive?
JP! There is a picture of a ’59 Plymouth – the resolution just makes it look like a different model year. 🙂 Believe it or not, Paul and I pondered over these pictures to a greater extent than we did a certain ’71 LTD convertible.
That last picture is a ’60, which, of all things, was about the second most represented make and model present that day – and it was actually sunk into the ground that far. He had a ’60 two-door wagon with a straight six that had a tree about three inches in diameter growing through the engine compartment.
I just learned today that Mr. Supinger has another auction in the last two or three years; the aerial view above does seem a bit sparse from what I remember.
We’ve got one.
“The kids would drive a car until something needed fixed…”
Hmm. Are you from “needs fixed” country, or was that a subtle reference to the other day’s grammatical discussion?
Until reading that thread, I had never heard the phrase “needs fixed” in my life; had I seen it in print, I would have assumed it was a typo. Googling it turns up quite a bit, demonstrating that we aren’t the first ones to have that discussion….
I guess I got into my small-southern-Indiana-town frame of mind. Needs fixed is a common expression around here. I have slapped myself on the wrist, and promised to note in the future that things require repair. 🙂
It’s a pretty common term from where I’m from, too. Not so much here in the Middle West, tho. “Hey! I’m fixin’ to leave!” is another colloquialism that raises eyebrows.
My favorite is “a whole nuther”, as in “that’s a whole nuther thing altogether”. Very common expression around here that makes absolutely no sense. As if “another” needs amping up, particularly by adding a word in the middle of another (or is it a whole nuther) word. Yet, I occasionally hear it coming out of my mouth. But that’s a whole nuther discussion. 🙂
“Needs fixed” drives me nuts as well. I don’t know what the habit with dropping words is all about. The first time I heard someone say “My car needs washed” I almost blew a gasket. Don’t even get me started on “My bad”.
Of course the article could use a couple fewer apostrophes as well.
ITS THE ONE’S THAT WRITE IN ALL CAP’S AND USE APOSTROPHE’S BEFORE EVERY S THAT REALLY DRIVE ME BANANA’S.
Sigh. They were his cars to do with as he pleased, but it saddens me when people hoard old cars like this.
When the owners die, or are forced to liquidate, the fate of many old cars seems to be the same: Loaded onto a scrap metal barge and shipped to China, where these once-proud land yachts are turned into cheap consumer goods, which are then shipped back to the U.S.
Sad to think that the steel in my toaster may have once been part of an Imperial…
Common misconceptions. I don’t think this guy hoarded cars with the idea that some day he was either going to restore them or drive them. Maybe even sell them. They were what they are. Parts! You have to remember that restoring cars,especially those built after WW2 is a baby boomer invention. Back when most of these cars roamed the roads nobody thought of them as Curbside Classics. When they broke or wore out that was it. Nobody wanted to buy them as scrap, nobody wanted to fix them to drive. This guy probably got them for free or dirt cheap. Ever wonder why you see so much junk in rural America? This is why. Today just about every metro area has somebody who buys junk cars. And I don’t think a lot of the scrap goes overseas either. Seems to me China buys zilch for scrap from the USA. Somebody recently said that India is the largest buyer and even thought that was a small percentage. Here’s where most of it goes IMO. Found this on the website of one of the many boneyards I like to frequent
“September 2011 – Gerdau Signs $7.35 Million Contract to Produce Steel for part of World Trade Center.
October 2012 – Olston’s Auto Recyclers has contracted with 110-year-old Gerdau Steel North America Company transforming our scrap vehicles into long steel… ”
You can find it here http://www.olstons.com/yard.html
Maybe some of these gems will also end up in the new World Trade Center too?
I don’t have the exact figures but my guess is that more than 10M vehicles will be built in the US this year. And who knows how many will be scrapped. I don’t think anybody manufacturing cars and trucks here in the US buys to much foreign produced steel. I used to be an OTR truck driver. I hauled lots and lots of aluminum to the two largest recyclers of aluminum in the country. I know for a fact that this country has enough aluminum to last it well into the next century. I’m assuming the same holds true for the steel industry.
It depends on which part of the country you are in. Here on the west coast Schnitzer Steel the owner of the Pick-N-Pull wrecking yards shreds cars at the ports and right into ships going straight to China. The conveyers coming out of the shredder actually dump right into the ships. They also buy from many of the independents, other wrecking yard chains and the guys that pickup scrap cars on the west coast. Cars that go to the Pick-N-Pull yards are in China within 2 months.
I can remember when old cars were more of a nuisance than anything. People who did not live within close range of a wrecking yard, did whatever they could to dispose of old cars. Driving or dragging them into the bushes, just out of sight of the road, was common practice. My late father-in-law pushed his wife’s tired 1949 dodge over a cliff when she didn’t need it anymore. My Dad sold a near-pristine 1961 Vauxhall Cresta for $25.00 in 1967, just because the clutch was slipping. The worst one I recall, from 1972, was a really straight 1957 Bel Air 2 door, which the owner abandoned next to the shed where I picked-up the newspapers for my route. After it hadn’t moved for a week, the boys brought hammers and hatchets from home and beat every inch of that Chevy to death!
There used to be a few wreckers / junkyards near my home I used to visit in my late teens. 30’s to 60’s cars were quite common in these places up to about 1990.
The most interesting one was on Hwy 6 near Hagarsville, some guy had an enormous collection of imported cars. Many many VW beetles, Isettas, Porsche 356s all rotting in an open field with No Trespassing signs.
Nice that you could attend the auction, but not so nice is the condition of these cars..
Never been there but Roblins Garage is a similar sort of setup, although they are crushing the cars apparently.. Google it!
http://www.roblins.net/2388/index.html
I think Roblins started crushing out over a year ago. Probably nothing left now.
Tewsley’s in Canfield, part-way between Binbrook and Dunnville, used to have a lot of old iron. The father crushed out most of it shortly before he died. The son runs the business now, but it’s all newer stuff.
Seeing those pictures sends a chill through me. I only have 8 cars, but being a good son to aging parents hooked on gardening and “keeping up appearances” keeps me away from my vehicles for many a weekend.
I hope none of my rides ends up like these. My family is way more important than any old car, but still.
Love the picture of the 1918 Elgin, ‘reputedly one of six remaining in existence’.
I think what we have here is actually the former number seven 🙂
Is this the saddest car ever seen on CC?
It’s hard to imagine how something could look any more sad.
There seems to be a fine line between an outside collection and a junk yard.
A very fine line, indeed. One thing I had neglected to state is that most of these cars were complete. His wife told me their son had spotted someone liberating a wiper motor from one of the cars. The son went out and made the guy put it back on and tighten the nuts down appropriately. Yes, a few of them were wrecked, but most were complete. He would only sell a whole car prior to the auction.
Are almost all of the hoods open to allow engine inspection at the auction?
Keeping the hoods open so some light gets in there helps keep the critters from building nests under there and chewing up the wiring and insulation to use as nest building materials. Of course that exposes them to the elements so it is a loose-loose situation.
Eric, you probably missed my comment the last time I pointed it out. The word is LOSE, not LOOSE. 🙂
Now that I think about it I did find a stash of acorns under a drivers seat once. I felt bad for the squirrel that did this because it did not do any damage to the car.
Correct on the hoods being open.