"So--Is it named after Chevy Chase?"

This day I drove to the Washington area in the early morning drizzle, something we haven’t had in quite a long time. More than halfway there my car phone rang—the job I was headed to had been cancelled. Ok, I said, thanking the caller and returning the way I’d come. Since I’d arisen at the ungodly hour of six o’clock to beat the horrific traffic in the area, I now had a good deal of time to kill. I had another job in the same area, for the same people, later in the day—around one o’clock. In the interim I would go fetch my old truck, change out of my good clothes, and don my salvage yard get-up, consisting of dirty jeans, work boots, and a dirty tee-shirt.

I got the old Mercury moving down the road in the light rain, its wipers doing a good job of cleaning off the front glass. Nothing fell out of the back, even though the truck was piled high with sheets of metal, drawers from the steel cabinets, and so on. I arrived at the processing yard to find no line—the only other customer in front of me was an old tow-truck with a red car trailing behind it. Trailing behind the car was a bit of metal that dragged on the ground. The tow-man wheeled his truck onto the scale and I followed—almost making the unforgivable mistake of driving right up there with him. This would have caused a mess, making the scale read out the weight of BOTH our vehicles, the junk inside and the car trailing his truck. I slammed on the brakes just as I was heading up the ramp to the scale and the truck’s old brakes locked the wheels on the muddy and slick surface that mostly made up the landscape of this place. They saved the day. Had I made this gaffe, I’m not sure I could have faced the scrap people—might have had to turn around and go home again.

The man at the scale handed me a piece of paper. It read, in rather small print, that I had a load of sheet iron and that we all weighed—the truck, the sheet iron and I—four thousand, eight hundred pounds. He then told me to follow the road around to a large stop sign and then go left. I disregarded the stop sign, thinking it was there more for effect than anything else. I was reprimanded later by one of the men tending the huge pile of scrap that was actively being fed by new arrivals every minute. The man with the tow-truck didn’t put the car here—it went somewhere else nearby, with a row of cars that had already been started.

“Next time stop at the stop sign,” said the scrap man.
“Ok—sorry.” I explained myself, telling the amiable man that I was simply a homeowner looking to rid myself of some junk, get a look inside the salvage yard, and come away with a few bucks to boot.
He nodded, “Well, you’ve got all the right stuff,” he said, looking over my load of steel.
I couldn’t have been prouder; my first outing at the scrap-processing yard and I’d hit a home-run. I positively beamed.

Things got a little scary then. I backed my little truck against the mountain of metal, the whole thing rising many feet in the air. On both sides of me was rather significant activity; one enormous truck was offloading a cargo consisting entirely of automobile and truck engines—hundreds of them. They came rolling and sliding out of the back of the huge trailer as it lifted its load skyward, allowing gravity to suck the thousands of pounds of steel and aluminum out the back. They all came crashing down with a tremendous sound, the irregularly-shaped hulks, with their wires and accessories still attached, bouncing off one another and tumbling toward the dirty ground at the base of the mountain of scrap. On the other side of me was an even more impressive display: A similar truck, with a similarly huge trailer, was loaded entirely with refrigerators, freezers, washers and dryers and other large appliances. It too raised the trailer skyward, letting the ponderous metal boxes come sliding down to the rear of the truck. With these two behemoths flanking me, their enormous steel dump-trailers tilting high in the air, I felt that I was in a skyscraper city of junk—and it was all tumbling down around me. I took care to avoid being nicked by an engine or stray refrigerator, took stock of my meager offering, and started throwing the scraps—bit by bit—into the base of the huge mountain. The work went fairly quickly; I was motivated not to spend too much time there, as enjoyable as the experience was. I pushed the antique range out the back, with its little oven and four burners and even a broiler down at the bottom. The thing hit the ground hard, spilling its guts, the old gas jets scattering on the dirty ground, the metal grates for the burners clattering heavily against the other steel there. They would no longer hold up a simmering pot of soup or stew, no more would they heat a can of corn or peas; the meals of the past were gone forever. No one would await a hot dinner from this relic any more.

I felt at one with the place, this feeling coming from my participation in its activities, its purpose for being. I was contributing to the cause. I could sling it with the others, the toothless ones, the grizzled and hardened types rolling in with their next meal loaded up and ready to sell—a collection of barbecue grills, steam radiators salvaged from a Baltimore rowhome, a dead motor from the repair shop.
“I’m junkin’ this stuff!” I could yell. “Ain’t doin’ me no good!” Then I could push something off the truck for effect.
“Dang! Lookit all them motors!” I could hazard the observation: “Gotta be something there for my old truck!”
I might have to work a bit on the easy give-and-take of the salvage yard crowd, the bonhomie and camaraderie that surely must make the dreary activities more tolerable.
I might just want to keep my comments to myself for the time being, waiting for a good opening. Playing the grizzled, hardened type for a while might be best. The feelings I describe here, although treated lightly, are markedly different from those I’d experience if I’d visited the place with a camera, a microphone, a crew with some recording equipment and had talked to the people there, gotten their thoughts on scrap and how this world worked. All of that was superfluous—I was immersed in their world, if only briefly, and accepted as one of them. The price of admission was the diverse offering I’d piled into the bed of the truck.

Payment came from an ATM there at the yard. Forty-eight dollars. The man from yesterday had been a bit generous, somewhat of an optimist when he’d sized up my load. Still, I was happy with the money. I gave my ticket to the weigh-man, he weighed my truck again, and handed over a plastic card. My load had amounted to almost a thousand pounds; rounded down, it was around nine-hundred pounds of scrap I’d loaded onto the truck. It didn’t feel that heavy. I jumped the clutch, letting the wheels spin on the slick coating of the scrap yard, and headed out.

I parked the truck back at my brother’s house, since that’s where I’d left my car. I got changed back into my office clothes at my house and left for Chevy Chase, the location for my next job. As I set up my equipment in the spacious Holiday Inn conference room, an attorney from the Midwest told me that he was in the middle of negotiations, that the case might settle. My services would not be needed, since no additional testimony would be given. That was just fine with me; I’d collect my minimum charge and be on my way, waving to the small huddle of vendors at the Bethesda farm market that I used to participate in as I drove home. This was Tuesday, and the sad little market was struggling against the grey and rainy day—with the polished and well-heeled Bethesda people reluctant to go out and buy fruits and flowers in such distressing weather.

The case settled, and I began packing up my gear. Another attorney from the Midwest—this one from Illinois—had never been to the area before, had never visited Washington. He remarked that Chevy Chase was a beautiful area. Yes—I had to agree; the amount of money that flowed into this suburb of Washington bought a lot of nice scenery, kept things just so, discouraged the riffraff, the more unconventional among us from cluttering up the landscape. No old pickups parked in the driveway here, no antique riding mowers sitting at odd angles in the yard, to what purpose no one really knew.

“So…the town is named after Chevy Chase?” This was the attorney from Illinois.
I had to pause.
“You mean the comedian? Chevy Chase—the actor?”
“Yes,” the attorney—a man in his late thirties or early forties nodded.
“No,” I had to break it to him gently. “The town’s not named after him.”
Well, what was it named after, then, he wanted to know? Where would such a name come from, if not from an actor who got his start on the Saturday Night Live television show. I told him it had to be something old, something rich and involving a lot of old money and was probably British in origin. A rich old pastime, you know; maybe, in the days when they had steeplechases (and they still do), this town was a nod to that tradition. I don’t know, really—I just wanted to get packed up and leave. The Illinois attorney seemed satisfied with this haphazard explanation, and we parted like that.

Later, tired from the day’s many and varied activities, I met the man who wanted to buy the van at my house. First, however, I’d driven to a place a little north of Baltimore to drop off materials from my last jobs. There, across from the office building, was a chocolatier—a place with a fancy name that sounded maybe French. I had to have some of their chocolates. I was worn out and frazzled, needed a break, so I walked over from the lot where my car was parked, crossed the busy road, and went inside. There, in a glass case, was a small assortment of truffles. They looked expensive.
“Thirty-four dollars a pound,” the woman said.
I picked out five of them, told her to just put them in a little bag. I would eat them while I drove around.
“That will be five dollars even,” she said.
I realized that I had no money, had only credit cards, other forms of plastic payment in my wallet. No checks, either. I told her all this, as I pointed to the sign I hadn’t seen before—or had conveniently ignored.
CASH OR CHECK ONLY
She wanted to know if I worked around there, could I just pay later? I told her that I didn’t come up this way very often, was really just there to drop off some things and wouldn’t be back for some time.
“Would you like to mail in your payment?” She asked.
I told her I would, was grateful that she was going to allow me to take away my truffles simply on the promise that I’d send in a check.

I ate the truffles—all of them—on the drive home. The chocolate was exquisite, the quality was obviously that of a hand-made confection. I sent in my payment the next day, promised to come back with actual money the next time.

Back to the van’s buyer: He came over to the house after the long day. The work on the van was finished, the inspection complete. He paid me in cash, an amount totaling five-thousand dollars. I gave him the title to the vehicle, wished him well, and promised to have it cleaned out by the time he picked it up from the repair shop. There was a lot of stuff in there, and I wasn’t looking forward to clearing it all out. Overall, however, this had been a painless transaction; no classified advertisements to buy, no hapless callers wasting my time, wearing out my patience. I was satisfied.

Later that evening I drove the other van to the shop, got everything cleaned out of the van I’d just sold, put the key under the seat, locked it up and said good-bye to the useful and undersized vehicle. I’d resisted buying a larger truck for two years now, but could no longer put it off. The woman with the painted windows, glasses, bottles and so on would make the rounds of the art shows, the outdoor festivals, displaying her offerings there and transporting them smoothly and safely in the efficient white Ford. Good luck and God bless.