[AT] Really depressing loss of old iron...

[Indiana Robinson]

	There was a property not far from me that I (and others) had been watching for years. It 
belonged to the parents (now deceased) of the wife of a neighbor of mine. Her parents had 
a tiny farm of maybe 20 acres and the guy was an "accumulator". The lot around the old 
unused house was all grown over and filled with all manner of old iron. One day a year or 
more ago he asked me to look at the stuff and try to give him an idea of values. Just 
hitting the top of the stuff I saw there were maybe 8 to 10 cars, half a dozen trucks, a 
couple of combines, several old rust eaten Model A Fords, several other old vehicles I 
did not recognize, a Fordson, 3 or 4 F-20's (a couple with road gears), an Allis WC and a 
bunch of bits and pieces of tractors and other implements. I had left him a low offer on 
the WC. He had been using it but someone slipped in and took the manifold and carb that 
winter. Several people had made him an offer on different stuff but he would not sell 
them. A couple of months ago I noticed that someone was starting to drag some of the 
stuff out into the field and figured that he was going to have an auction sale which was 
what I had suggested to him. Then I heard that he was cleaning it out because the county 
had given him notice. I already knew that he wanted to clean the property and build a new 
home there further from town than here.
	Saturday when Son Scott and I were talking to a friend of Scott's that is the son-in-law 
of the owner of the local junk yard and who is the co-operator of that yard, he gave us 
the bad news (this friend lives just around the corner from that property). It seems that 
our neighbor struck a deal with some local scrap cutter for the whole mess and ---
"EVERYTHING"--- was cut up for scrap and hauled to a salvage yard about 25 miles south of 
here... Seems the scrapper is a bit of an idiot... Scott's friend went to see him at the 
site and took a "bunch" of cash and tried to buy several pieces telling the guy to just 
give him a price but the cutter just kept saying everything was worth more as scrap and 
would not consider quoting an asking price of any kind.
	The old iron flag is flying at half mast here...   :-(

-- 
"farmer", Esquire
At Hewick Midwest
      Wealth beyond belief, just no money...

Paternal Robinson's here by way of Norway (Clan Gunn), Scottish Highlands,
Cleasby Yorkshire England, Virginia, Kentucky then Indiana. In America 100 
years 
before the revolution.


Francis Robinson
Central Indiana USA
robinson at svs.net