Talking Gary junkyards, slant sixes, and such: “Slant” writer Gary Platz

I still got some manifolds because Ed and I would extract them off the engines

And the fellow, the guy that was working there, he'd go, you want those things? And he said, yeah, yeah

He says, how much? And he says, $5. We went back and got some more

Nowadays, you're lucky to find anything like that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, people, I see them being sold on Facebook for $250 and up

I'm amazed what some folks want for this stuff. Me, I've sold a couple for like $75

That's it. I'm not trying to, you know, I'm not planning on becoming rich with it

So, you know. But yeah, it's just, it amazes me what the prices that people put on some of that stuff on eBay

I don't know if they sell any of it. I know. I think the same thing

Well, maybe it's all the shipping. Ed touched upon that, okay? He thought we could sell these things, ship them to people

and oh my word, the worst one was a lady in California

As you know, California didn't allow the two barrel because of emissions

So later, in later years, they could do it. So I sent her the intake and exhaust

And by the time it got to California, the wonderful post office had managed to crack them

To do the right thing, I had to send them again. So that was not a money-making

proposition shipping those darn cast iron manifolds good grief i read i did the best i could to

package it but man they heavy yeah those things they did crack as soon you know when you look at them funny Oh exactly Until they put that rib in them Later you know that helped a lot

Yeah. It's just, just the nature of the beast. So Ed and I used to, it's in the book about how we put them on a car hood and drug through the rain, you know

because they were too heavy. And I remember, Ed's, they put tools

in his pockets and his trousers were drooping down and go oh great day man you know but the thing about

it is uh be in the slant sick club i have met so many people have made new friends over the years you

know it's just like you ed rich gable willie mclean stan aton and can round off some other name

oh my gosh i think my wife my late wife and i found a really

realtor or something because he was moving into the Williamsburg area. So we kind of connected

And then I found out he had the van. It was a day after Christmas, I think 92

And we went there and he said, it's a U.Pullet sort of thing

You pay your dollar. You walk in there. And we do scrounge all kinds of things that way

So that's where a whole lot of these things came about. And you know, Dave, to this day, I think most people can relate going to the junkyard rather

than pull out a summit catalog and order things, you know. As long as it's a non-moving part, I mean, we got, oh, differentials out of the cars

I never forget these two fellows came down from Maryland and they had that Dodge military oh what is that called You know better than a Dodge Military Truck Surve at the time had half Labor Day would be at half price

So they found a cop car with a 440 to 727 in it

They spent, of course, the whole day extracting him out of the car

Well, by the time they finished, this is December, so you know, the days are short

so they stayed overnight in a motel and then came back Sunday and loaded up in their truck

They were so happy because I think they got both of them for like $100. And so we would help them

And that was the whole idea of going to Circle. We did the Slant SaneSage Meet at Circle so that if there was something that somebody wanted

well, we'd go help them get it if it was something that couldn't handle or didn't know how to do

And we had another fellow, I wish I could remember his name, he had a Valori

and he found one of those tough wheels so he took it out the joker

then we had some tools so he went back and put it in his

ballari or asper whatever it was because he was glad to get it

I had one for Fugley I found one I put it on Fugley Fugley was another thing

that was one of my favorite trucks it was in bad shape

I got at a dealership for like $1,200 and it had that ugly

70s P green color and was beat up the three speed slant six

So I started working on that. A friend of mine worked at the dealership and they had a ram charger there with the bucket seats So he gave me the bucket seats which I put in the in fog I built my own console in the middle and all that good stuff Then went to my former sister and her husband

He and I spent Labor Day, I think, 95 or something like that

And we painted it. We spent the whole weekend prepping it and painted

I got the paint from another fellow at work. DuPont paint. It was like a dark green metallic, beautiful color

So he sold me a bunch of cords of that, and we painted the truck that color

The interior, I used rattle can, and I painted it black. The interior is that piquy green

I painted all black. It surprises me because you started out in the early 90s

Around here, that's when all those you-pick junkyards were starting to shut down

Yep. It's a shame because we still have a circle, which is now Chesterfield

auto parts. There's a couple others around here that are still operating. I don't know how much

longer that'll have. You know, I don't know. Of course, we go to Circle now, there's no, there's no

old cars. Now, they used to have auctions. They would auction off. Remember, they had a couple

Kaiser's, old Buicks and stuff like that. They would auction off. I mean, they were rust buckets

It was just fun. It was just, and we never took it seriously

So we'd go there, come back to the house here, my late wife

we'd get out here and put the grill out, you'd have hamburgers, hot dogs

and we sit in the backyard and just, you know, circle opened in, I think it was 92, I believe him right