The Gustavus Thread

[BarrenRealms007]

Hey welcome to the rubbish forum, er I mean the scrappers Forum your wealth of knowledge will be a welcome addition.

Yea I got the problem solved for those heavy beaters that the crane struggles to lift I now back up to it bumper to bumper then lift the heavy beast onto its tail which draws it nearer to the rear of my deck then when i lower the beast it settles onto the deck then I can suck the rest onto the deck using the jib.

Couple of months back I searched out the owner of a vacant farm which has some scrap kicking about, the guy was being difficult over the phone and he annoys me, eventually I asked him if he thought he was speaking with the Village idiot.



Well this afternoon I'm taking a load of scrap lumber to the landfill, the load is insecure but I'm compensating by going slow when a car comes up alongside and pulls me over we both get out of our vehicles meeting at the back of his SUV.

Fist question out of his mouth is, you live at the corner I say yes and you are. He replies Corporal Blink, knowing full well my load is insecure I ask him if he is on duty, he says no I'm a Dr. just checking your heart. Then he makes a comment about a call I made several months back with the inference to the Village idiot. Ahhh I say your Doug.

Anyhow he's coming over in an hour or so, we're going out to his vacant farm property to tag the junk, which is fairly straight forward an old truck, combine, some augers and a pallet full of lead acid battery's.

With the price of scrap metal dropping I'm not prepared to make an offer and will say so when we meet. As we all know from the news China is heading into some hard times then everyone is worried about the Euro the ripples will have far reaching tentacles like a vise on our testicles. Its going to hurt!

Thanks sir,

Not sure how much that truck weighs. My Ford built similar to that hit's the scales at around 5400 lbs with tools on it. I just pulled 2 GMC 3500's into town about 3 weeks ago. They were cought in the floods last year in Memphis. I'm going to try to sell the utility beds and scrap the rest. I pulled the oil sticks out and the engines are full of water One of them had a new Jasper crate engine and transmission and the other had a used engine with less then 30,000 miles on it. You want to drive down here and make a haul....

Now I got it, I was thinking scrap not gold.

No, it sits, I loaned the guy my books Hoke and Ammens in hard copy, they both sat undisturbed on his coffee table for three weeks so I brought them home. I'm not going to waste my time and acids with someone not willing to read.

I have cemented out the values using copper and will wait for a day when he is able to come over then melt what he has into a button so that he cant accuse me of theft, then I'm going to send him on his way.

The tin was a surprise and a little bit goes a long ways in making that nasty paste.

You are probably better off if he is not going to make an effort to learn anything. Hey you have been there before it is a loosing battle no matter what you do.

[gustavus]

Another funny twist of fate, when I was 16 years old and had my first street legal car, a 55 ford with a 272 cid overhead valve engine, 3 speed standard with 411 gears got my 1rst speeding ticket in the USA and a lesson in geography.

The border guard thought we meant Vancouver Wash, when we really meant that we were heading to Vancouver B.C., the three of us dumber than a sack of hammer heads.

Me and a buddy went from the lower mainland to Penticton to see the babes on the beaches then going back home made a wrong turn ending up at the US border crossing the guy asks us where were headed we say Vancouver and he lets us pass.

As were booting it along I soon notice were heading south towards the Grand Coulée Dam so I make a quick u-turn then passing through Tansaket Washington get tagged for speeding.

The fine is $85.00 I don't have the cash and the Sheriff tells me that he will hold me until someone comes down to pay the fine when I begin to laugh he asks me what is so funny. I tell him that my old man is not the type of guy to come and bail me, if he locked me up I would be there for a long time and that he should keep the car until I came back to pay the ticket.

His reply was that the car was not worth the price of the ticket. I told him it was to me, he cut me loose. My fist job working in a cannery stamping the size of the peas onto the box as they passed by on a never ending conveyor belt. Fist payday I'm out of there heading back up to get my car.

That car was soon to be the first ever I sold as scrap, one night me and the bud managed to fill the tank with diesel then engine ran like crap then eventually quit, the next day another friend with a 59 Chevy pushed my car for miles before it got warm enough to ignite the diesel. It barely ran long enough to make it to the scrap yard when I got onto the scale the scaleman asks me what I have and I say your looking at it.

I had a love hate relationship with the old Ford every time you hit a bump or went over a set of RR tacks the vibrator tube from the radio would fall out then roll around on the floor. The first weekend I had it burned a set of tires off.

The best part about buying that car was the look on my fathers face when he looked out the bedroom window at 5 am and here I am washing this darn car on our front lawn.

My father was well aware that he had a rebel on his hands, I've had my own pre paid funeral plot since I was 8 years old. The old man was hedging a bet that he lost my plot remains unused.