The Junk Yard

It was so terribly cold. Snow was falling, and it was almost dark. Clarence and I stood near the back of the yard, between two rows of old junkers. He was leaning against a light pole, placed in the yard to discourage thieves. The orange lamp atop the pole illuminated the snowflakes swirling about in the rising wind. It was bitterly cold – I had to keep my hands stuffed deep into my coat pockets so they wouldn’t go numb. Clarence wouldn’t let the dogs roam the junk yard tonight. Both hounds were safe and warm inside his mobile home, out near the entrance.

Clarence owned the yard. It was his livelihood, back before he retired. His dad had owned a whole chain of car parts salvage yards, across four counties. Left them all to Clarence when he died, along with sixty years of savings. Given that his dad hardly spent a dime on anything, those savings amounted to quite a sum. Over time, Clarence had sold off all the other yards, except for this one – the original. With each sale, he had distilled down the inventory in this yard to include only his favorites, the oldest models of classic cars, pickups, and vans.

I’d met Clarence a few years ago, when I showed up on his lot with my large format film camera, complete with bellows and bulb shutter release, along with my heavy tripod. I’d wanted to capture the faded glory of his inventory and reveal the beauty in their designs. By then, he’d already been retired for seven years. At first he’d refused my request, but when I’d shown him the old film camera and ten unexposed glass plates, he’d lifted the tattered brim of his hat, wiped the sweat from his forehead with a dark blue handkerchief, and said I could take photographs so long as I didn’t touch anything. I think he saw a common thread in our souls – of appreciating the past – the way thinks were built, the way they worked, the style and perfect functionality they embodied.

Over the years, I’d shot there over twenty times. He’d attended all four of my art show openings, the walls covered with silver gelatin prints in which I’d done my best to capture the magic of the old 1951 Studebaker sedan, the faded green 1958 Packard, and a hundred other relics of the Golden Age of the automobile. Back in the age of style.

Tonight, though, it was just the two of us, along with those rusting hunks of metal, leather, wood paneling, and glass. It was Christmas Eve, one of the special nights here at Woods’ Auto Salvage. Once night had fallen, Clarence removed a small laser from his pocket. Normally meant to amuse his dogs with the moving red dot, tonight it served a different purpose. He fired the beam toward the lamp and eventually found its low-tech photo-sensor. Once the beam struck it, the light system’s electronics thought it was daylight, and the orange lamp winked out. Ahhhhhhh… Now it was perfectly dark as snow continued to fall.

I was here by special invitation, so long as I promised to leave my field camera at home. He’d briefed me earlier on what to expect. Our own silence was a prerequisite for the mystery I was about to witness.

Complete darkness was needed to see the ghosts. The first one – Clarence knew him as Mister Jones – materialized as a barely discernible figure of hazy, gray light. Mister Jones appeared behind the wheel of the big Packard. He wore his fedora, suit and tie. As our eyes adjusted to the deep darkness, the ghostly light took on a greenish cast. The family man’s head turned this way and that, his hands sliding along the upper circumference of the steering wheel, as if he were driving home from work. That’s what Mister Jones had been doing when the collision occurred and smashed in the driver’s door. The disaster that had killed him instantly. He never reached the white-picket-fenced house where his wife and children waited, so they could all say grace and have dinner together.

Clarence reached into his coat pocket, removed his silver plated flask, unscrewed the cold metal lid, and whispered “To you, Mister Jones,” before taking a sip. He passed it to me, and I sipped. Back into his pocket the flask went. The wind gusted hard, so he pulled in his neck and nestled his chin against the faux fur collar of his winter coat.

Then another apparition materialized – a faint blue glow that could only mean one person – Florence Smith. She stood for a while, rummaging through her ectoplasmic purse until she found a cigarette and lighter. After lighting up and taking a couple drags, she strode gracefully over to the ‘57 Chevy and climbed inside. She always wore the same hat, Clarence said. The one she’d worn when a heart attack had sent her coasting gently to the curb, where another driver had stopped and found her already dead, still seated upright behind the wheel, her cat’s eye sunglasses reflecting the whole world, her eyelids shut in peace behind them.

Something was special about Christmas Eve – it’s when these ghostly drivers and passengers chose to appear and sit behind the wheel again. Clarence had researched their deaths, and none of them had died on Christmas Eve. It must have been the Christmas magic, he’d speculated to me over the dinner we’d enjoyed together earlier that afternoon.

If you wonder how I could’ve believed Clarence – that he could see ghosts here at the yard – you have to forget all the preconceived notions of what’s really possible, and believe in a magical world. That’s how Clarence taught me to see reality – as inherently magical – where nothing is quite as it seems, and where nothing is impossible. Before I’d met Clarence, I’d been a software engineer who enjoyed old-school photography. But did I believe in ghosts? No. But Clarence was born free of the mind-limiting boundaries that constrain most people’s way of thinking, including my own, after so many years of education in mathematics, physics, computer science.

He’d dropped out of junior high school to work with his dad. But he also loved to read, and with his library card, he’d spent every day of his life since then educating himself. In the warmer months, most days you’d see Clarence walking among the wrecks with an open book in hand. Reading. Forever reading.

Then, at ten PM, the Dougherty family appeared – Mom, Dad, Timmy, and little Lucy. They materialized inside the sprawling Polara rag-top convertible, on their way to the Blue Dell drive-in for a Disney double feature. Little Lucy sat in back and hugged a faintly glowing teddy bear. Half the Polara’s front end was missing, its one remaining headlight now hazed over with a cataract of weathering and age. Tragedy struck them before the movies – a head-on collision with a dump truck that swerved into the opposing lane.

We stood out there as the snow fell and the temperature dropped below zero, until midnight. And then all the ghosts slowly faded away, and we were left standing in the snow-muffled silence, the wind whistling through holes in all these rusty wrecks about us, these memorials to everyday life, and all the good things that people want and dream for.

Until next year...