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Patches
Meretzky’s
Salvage
By Rich - Back Seat
Driver
“Meretzky’s Salvage” sat on what I recall to be an enormous
amount of land three blocks away from my childhood home. “The
Yard,” as we called it, was cordoned off by a combination of chicken
wire, chain link, and barbed wire, but was easily accessed by any
number of adventurous kids via any number of holes that had been
cut/torn/rusted out over the years. It was somewhat of an
anomaly in the neighborhood, being surrounded by relatively new
tract homes that had sprung out of the ground like mushrooms years
after Bessie Meretzky parked the first discarded heap of iron she
had reclaimed in the back corner of her small farm. “An
eyesore,” my father noted every time we drove by Meretzky’s yet, to
my ten year old car-crazy eye, it represented a literal treasure
trove of carcheological data that we were only too lucky to have a
mere three blocks away.
My parents repeatedly warned me to
never enter the yard, attempting to frighten me away with gruesome
tales of children who were taken to the hospital following
horrendous accidents that happened when they violated their parents’
similar prohibitions. Tales of dog-sized rabid rats, vats of
toxic chemicals, and other dangers were regular fare of my parents
when discussing the evils of The Yard. However, as any
self-respecting ten year old would admit likewise, such stories
actually added to the fascination I had with the rusting hulks that
called to me like sirens to the rocks each time I rode my Sting-ray
slowly past the rusted gates and dirty, cracked cement
drive.
Jamie Meretzky, Bessie’s grandson, was in my grade and
was the exact kind of kid my parents were thrilled they never had.
Jamie chain-smoked by the time he was in Third Grade, swore
artfully, twisting vulgarity and sexuality into alchemic sculpture,
and was rumored to have a stash of magazines in The Yard that
“showed everything.” He was a source of circus fascination for
his classmates; in all honesty, he was kind of a scary kid who by
the age of twenty was a quadriplegic resultant from a high speed
rollover in his junky old Camaro, but that’s another story entirely.
I was a friendly acquaintance with Jamie, better to be that
than an enemy of his I figured, but never invited any closer
relationship over the years.
I was riding by The Yard one
warm summer night, engaging in my ritual of slowly scanning the
detritus to see if I could identify any of the tailfins or grilles
or headlights or door handles of any of the burnt orange mass that
rested just feet away from my curious fingertips. As if out of
the oxide mist, Jamie appeared on the other side of the chain-link
that night and asked me what was up. I stopped the bike, said
“nothin’,” and was shocked that Jamie actually struck up a
conversation with me. He was smoking, wore a “Ford Rules”
t-shirt with a Big Daddy Roth slab of leering artwork above it,
oil-stained and bald black Converse All-Stars, and jeans that were
once upon a time, blue. Our conversation soon turned from the
usual pre-pubescent theme of tits to that of cars. After a
brief period, Jamie snuffed out his smoke, and asked me if I wanted
to come in and “cruise The Yard.” As though under a hypnotic
spell, I promptly forgot my parents’ warnings, numbly dropped my
bike on its side, and walked for the first time through the
hubcap-adorned gates of “Meretzky’s Salvage.”
In the fading
light, walking the paths between towers of metal, I recognized
sun-rotted dagmars from early fifties Caddys, toothy grilles from a
couple ‘49’s, orphaned Continental-kits laying against old Coke
machines, cannibalized ‘Vettes, and a couple of weird little
convertibles tucked snugly up against some vicious-looking farm
implements. We stood for a minute and threw rocks at the
windows of a non-descript (and bullet-ridden) sedan, and suddenly I
awoke from my sheet-metal induced stupor and noticed that Jamie was
talking about something having to do with never seeing his dad and
how lucky I was that I had “real” parents, seemingly oblivious to
how lucky he himself had it living right smack-dab in the middle of
this wonderland.
We wandered around for a while, telling
filthy jokes (Jamie’s were way better than mine) and eventually
climbed one of the stacks of crushed cars and sat on the roof of one
of them while we watched the sun set over the duck pond at the Deaf
School. For whatever reason, that single moment seared itself
into my memory with precise detail. I can still smell the
tangy scent of rust, the dull odor of oil, and the dank mustiness of
rotting leather. I can feel the dirty water pooled next to me
in a dent on the roof of the car and can hear the Burlington
Northern freight locomotive bellowing somewhere north of me out on
highway 2. I can also see Jamie crying.
The sun burned
down into an ember on the horizon and I realized how late it was
getting. Panicked that my curfew had passed, I told Jamie I
had to go to avoid the dreaded late-summer-vacation grounding.
He nodded, wiped the sweaty tears off his cheeks with the
front of his grimy shirt, hocked up a huge loogie, spat, lit up
another smoke, and we carefully picked our way down the outcropping
of Chevys, Fords, Pontiacs, and Buicks. As we walked toward
the gate, I lingered over the two funny little cars. Jamie
walked up to one of them, took out what I recall to be a huge knife,
and popped off the chrome insignia that adorned the powdered, dusty
blue trunk of one of them. He tossed it to me, told me to not
be “such a fucking stranger,” and headed into his grandma’s broken
down old trailer. I yelled back for him to “not be so fucking
strange” shocking myself at my f-bomb usage and sailor-wit, slipped
the newfound illicit treasure into my pocket, hopped on my
Sting-ray, and rode home, arriving exactly seventeen minutes after
my curfew. Dad notified me that I was grounded for the next
two weeks, but as I fingered the contours of the “M” and the “G” and
the “A” in my pocket, I figured that some things in life were worth
the cost. That night was one of
them.
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