Abandoned and Found

I was rooting around the October issue of Hemmings Motor News, the print edition of course…

…when I spotted this painful piece hidden away among the 674 pages of classifieds for antique, muscle, and classic cars and parts.

“She last saw him on the back of a flatbed truck, along with a couple other hitchhikers, after convincing the driver to take him West. All their savings in his pocket, he promised her he’d call when he reached California, and bought a house and farm large enough for their brood. They’d tried their luck in Southern Maine and only produced five children in their seven years there. She remembered the look on his face, stony and without the emotion she’d expected.”

“She knew now how foolish she’d been.”

“Shortly thereafter she took what was left of their meager potato harvest to trade for the local school district’s old Dodge bus, missing its grille, seats and with an old bent front right wheel. She traded some housecleaning for an old Ford grille that kinda fit in the empty grille shell, and her oldest, Jeffry, found a straight wheel along the side of the road. She didn’t bother asking Jeffry where he really found it.”

“She tore down the chicken coop out back – she’d already traded or butchered the chickens anyway, and used the lumber to build shelves where the seats had been in the back of the bus.”

“But a week without word from him turned into a month turned into a year. Jerffry threw stones through all but one window and the windshield and screamed that he hated Maine and he hated California.”

“She knew now how foolish she’d been.”

I contacted the writer at Hemmings, Dan Strohl, and asked if the story was true.

Dan wrote me: “The picture was submitted by a reader, though I don’t recall exactly who at this point… The pictures most often come to us with very little information – mostly just the location of the vehicle – and can sometimes be several years old.

I’ve been doing Abandoned Autos for four years now and I got tired of taking what little facts I knew about the car and its surroundings and presenting a straight story on it, so I simply started fictionalizing the stories behind the photos. A lot of readers don’t like that approach because it doesn’t tell them exactly where to go find the abandoned car (and then either pull parts off it or obtain it outright), but if I do ever hear about the fate of a vehicle depicted in Abandoned Autos, it’s usually gone from that location well before I’ve written anything about it.”

Reminds me of another wonderful project, Cassette from my Ex, run by Jason Bitner, a friend of Campfire’s — old mix-tapes from ex-boy or girl friends, with the story of the relationship, including their breakup. The big plus is you can play the the mix-tapes on the site. Jason also runs Found, another place you can follow stories about abandoned stuff.

Technorati Tags: Abandoned, Found, Hemmings