Decisions Decisions...

I've got junk in the trunk-as usual.


I have a great junkyard in my town-APS Recycling, off Route 80 in Stroudsburg, PA. Known for years as Katz's Scrap Yard, the latter is still the name most locals know it by. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of Katz's, which is also located about two blocks from my late grandparents' former home. After Sunday dinners, it was always a treat to walk over to the junkyard and check out all the 'cool' junk, as I saw it. Of course my lifelong love of junk has been previously addressed (and, quite frankly is the reason for posting) in this blog, so this will come as no surprise to most regular readers (ARE there regular readers?)

In the past two years I've made a lot of new friends with my movie project. One of them is Jeff, my FX guy, a fellow traveler who likes junk and scrap as much as I do. It's always nice to find someone else like you, that everyone else would call 'crazy', if only to know that it's not just you. Jeff and I cash in some scrap now and then, and with scrap prices what they are right now, we have made a little walkin' around money in doing so, as well as found some pretty cool shit in the junkyard.

Last weekend, I was taking my usual walk around and I found the little gem in the above photo-motorcycles and power toys are kept in their own section, as they are available for re-sale. The toys are usually pretty picked over, however, and this little guy sat pretty much as it sits here in the bed of my truck-on its side-except in the dirt. At first I didn't pay it much mind, other than to make note of how sad it looked sitting there, and how it had, at one time, probably made some little guy or gal pretty freakin' happy.

What I also took a mental note of was that I had not remembered Arctic Cat making mini-bikes. Usually something like this is cause for me to yell internally "TO THE SMARTPHONE!!!" and to look up more info. But I was a bit off my game that day, and was honestly looking at some pallet racking for my basement, so I filed the little mini-bike idea away, and assumed quite fairly that someone else would snag it in no time.

Later that day, I sat down at the computer to do my usual Facebook check and the like, and entered 'Arctic Cat Mini-bike" in the search bar. About twenty minutes later I had found that Arctic Cat had not only made mini-bikes for a few years in the late 60s through the early 70s, but that the series this particular model (at this point, presumed to be a 1972 Prowler) came from was in relatively low numbers and sought after by collectors. A subsequent search of Ebay yielded examples in similar condition to my own, going for anywhere from $300 (in the condition the one above is currently) to $1500 or more restored. It didn't take a genius to figure out it was worth a trip back to the junkyard to see if the little Cat was still available.


What it should look like-it doesn't-but in ways you aren't thinking of just yet. Note the infinitely awesome trademark Arctic Cat simulated leopard skin vinyl seat.



I headed back Monday after work nervous-I knew the bike was worth something-maybe someone else had known too, just hours after me, and had snagged it? My palms were sweating as I signed in at the office. I quickly (yet calmly, so as not to attract attention) walked over to the power equipment, to find, to my relief and delight, that the bike indeed still lay there in the dirt. Calmly I walked it over, on the back tire only, to the scales. An item like this at APS is re-sold for a markup over scrap weight-so I was only going to pay roughly double of what someone else was paid to drop it off-while dropping off scrap is profitable, buying it in forms such as this is not cost-prohibitive. At 95 pounds, I was going to be laying out $20.14 for the bike! I quickly paid and tossed the bike into the position in my truck you see in the photo. I took it home and promptly put it in my garage to get a better look under the lights.

The bike has a 47cc Sachs "Saxonette" two-stroke engine-not unlike a large chainsaw. This means several things-first, that the thing is probably loud as German Nazi buzzbombs, second, that it probably rips turf like it ain't no thang, and third, it's probably fun as Hell as a result of the first two things.

A few problems were obvious from the start-while the bike is largely complete, it is missing the pull-start mechanism, and the cylinder is frozen. I've had good luck in the past with freeing up cylinders, so I figured, at minimum, if I could free it up, it would be worth more when I sold the little rusted hulk. Ebay also seemed to have a fair amount of parts, despite the relative rarity of the bikes. Today this particular market is saturated with low-quality Chinese imported models. The Cat was, in its time, no doubt made in American of all-American components. The mini-bikes of today will not likely hold the value this bike does today, forty years from now. They will, no doubt, sadly been long since melted down into new crap we don't need sometime before that.

Here's where the problem started. I sat and stared at the little bike, thinking about all the good times someone had had on it, and the charm that it must surely still hold as a result-my father, a toy truck collector, will not buy any new-in-box toys for this reason-he believes that an item played with and enjoyed possesses a certain mojo nothing pristine could ever hope to hold. I thought of my girlfriend's son, Christopher, just 11 and reaching a point where something like this would surely capture his interest. I got looking around my shop at all the tools I rarely get to use-my sandblast cabinet, powdercoating setup, electrolytic rust remover,etc. I know how to anodize, re-line motorcycle gas tanks, and can loosen, disassemble, clean and reassemble just about anything. Against the urging of Jeff and others, I decided to try my hand at restoring the bike. At worst, I figured it would be in that much better shape to sell if I gave up halfway through and had to liquidate. But I don't want to think about that right now.

Wastelands of Suburbia: OH YEAH!!!!

Wastelands of Suburbia: OH YEAH!!!!

OH YEAH!!!!

My favorite rite of Spring is here-my first visit to the Blue Ridge Flea Market! Today was a bit slow, vendors shaking the sleepers from their eyes and slowly setting up. I have a pretty solid list of what I'm looking for this year, which includes:

Mini bike (For my GF's ten year-old son Chris, he of the blue custom toolbox)

Electric Trolling motor-for converting to gas via a weedwacker motor-I already have THIS:


Weedwacker-see above

Extra wrenches, etc. for my truck toolbox

And the list goes on.....if you like real flea markets and not knockoffs and bootleg crap, this one is great!

There-he fixed it.

My co-worker's genius is evident in his careful re-purposing of a vintage doorknob as a handle for his truck cap. It's beautiful.

What. The Hell.

So I just realized it's been a year and two months since my last post-and you may be asking yourself, 'hey, Asshole, where ya been?" Fair enough question-one could assume that, like with the average blogger, life kinda happened, the kids, the wife, etc...however, I have one lame excuse and one good one. First, the lame:



First off, Facebook happened-curse you Facebook, and your nearly instant gratification after posting....curse the adoration of hundreds as every witty thing that comes out of one's mouth is quickly 'liked'. However, it has put me in touch with some very talented people, which leads me to Excuse #2:



At age 40, I decided to fulfill a lifelong dream of making my own horror film. This has been a joyous and frustrating odyssey, and is far from over. I'd have blogged on this, but man oh man does it keep you BUSY. The rundown and progress of things is well documented here and here.

With any luck, the post-production schedule will allow me to post more frequently-that's all for now, hope I didn't lose anyone.

Happy Birthday.

So Dr. Girlfriend's little guy, Chris, had a birthday this week, and rather than go with the typical Super Mario Brothers pi offering, I figured I would get him his first toolbox and set of tools. After an hour and close to a hundred bucks at Harbor Freight, he had a pretty impressive set of starter tools, that, if forgotten, lost, stolen, or broken, would, in the end, just have been Harbor Freight tools. We are slowly going through everything to learn what does what.

With all that stuff, you need a decent toolbox. I was initially just going to get him your basic plastic Stanley (Or similar) box, then I thought about it and asked "What would I want?" The answer was metal. I managed to scrounge up this vintage blue hammertone toolbox at my folk's house. It had been my grandmother's for craft stuff, so it was not only a nice solid box but a nice solid heirloom. So I cleaned up the outer finish with just a wee bit of Minwax Furniture Refinisher and #0000 steel wool to take off the paint spatter and leave just the original hammertone paint. I then hit it with some Meguiar's Cleaner Wax and my yard sale buffer. Brought the shine back quite nicely if I say so m'seff. Finally, I topped it off with a custom set of decals with his name-you can pick ones up like this off Ebay, they are two-layer, but come on one transfer film like any other die or laser cut decals. For about eight bucks, you can really make something pop with personalization.

The toolbox went over like no one's business-we are carefully choosing our first project now. Maybe a birdhouse?

PLUM CRAZY.

(Imagine, if you will, a time when a purple car was feared on the road.)

OK, so things have been a bit car and bike-heavy lately. My apologies to those looking for the little kitschies of the past, they come in dribs and drabs. I've been working on various projects and I'm just getting around to posting these shots from a few weeks ago. While at the lovely Dr. Girlfriend's lair, we caught a small car show, and I saw a few Mopars. My friend b (aka brian) is a bit of a Mopar nut so I never hesitate to hook him up with a few shots of my finds. I saw this squadron of Road Runners and GTXs-the one to the left is tan, the right blue, and of course this Plum Crazy purple in the leader's position. The over the top colors of the late late 60s and early 70s Mopars were the pinnacle of craziness at the time, and no fly yellow Ford Splash or Chevy SSR is ever going to be able to do a thing about it.


(and....in blue)

I feel like I'm phoning this one in, but it's late-more later.

Days Of Thunder Past...

(The size of this post really does not give my new camera's resolution justice-click the photo for a better look)

As a resident of the Pocono Mountains, I love when race weekend comes to the famed Tri-Oval at Pocono Raceway-the hysteria is palpable as you see car haulers, RVs, vendors, and thousands of race fans pour into town for three days of speed,sun and beer. I'm not as much a NASCAR fan as I once was, but I had to snap a picture of Jimmy Spencer's Heinz 57 Pontiac Grand Prix, circa approximately 1990. The Friday's logo is not period perfect, but considering it sits in front of a Friday's in Wilkes-Barre, about twenty minutes from the track, I'll let it slide, as it's obviously for promotional purposes. While I was certainly not a pre-teen in 1990, I did enjoy building the Monogram model kit of this car:


(Of course the driver of the car at the time was Hut Stricklin, seen molded in plastic at bottom right. Jimmy would have been too expensive to cast even in plastic, given his size in 1990.)
NASCAR has jumped the shark for me-the fancy graphics on TV and the WWE-ness of it turns me away. I like the old days when it was grittier and no one knew much about it north of the Mason Dixon line. But I'm halfway to Old Fart now, so what do you expect?