The Incredible Hulks

This day was not especially productive. I arose around eight o’clock, got some bank deposits together, and figured out what I currently owed for the most recent invoices on hand. If I’d stopped there and did nothing else today, that would have been a fairly high level of output for me. However, I did more—I took a walk in the woods.

I met my brother at his house, he suggested that we drive over to the park to enjoy the fall day with a hike under the colorful canopy of leaves—and to look at some old automotive relics scattered in the woods. This is one of my favorite things, finding these old hulks from the forties and sometimes earlier.

We parked along a road that winds through wooded parkland, the narrow lane carrying a little traffic between Catonsville and Ellicott City. Walking into the woods, we soon came across some old buildings made of the local stone that is abundant in the area. All that remained of these old farmhouses was perhaps a couple of front steps that led to a stone foundation that revealed a basement hewn from the rocky soil. The wooden parts of the houses were long gone, victims of time and weather and the natural forces that erase—after a certain time—everything that man has made. Trees grew up from the enclosures where once the main part of the house stood. The foundations and basements were remarkably intact, seeming to invite new settlers to build upon what the departed ones had abandoned. With trees growing everywhere, it was difficult to imagine the land as the people there knew it—the pastures carved out of the woods, the fences still mutely outlined with sturdy posts that stood solitary, each one a separate entity, not bound to each other any longer. Here was an old gateway, the rusted hinge pins still protruding from the wood. And, a little removed from the main house, was a deep well—a dangerous hole lined with stone, dug straight down into the earth. These things can be twenty or thirty feet deep—or more. This one had some old metal building materials thrown over it to help keep the unwary from falling in. I pulled one of the metal pieces away, peered in, but could not get a feel for how deep the well had been dug.

And of course there were the remnants of automobiles. The oldest ones were from the 1940s—a large Buick with an inline eight-cylinder engine exposed to the outdoors for the past fifty years or so. Its pistons were frozen in time, locked in place by the snows, the rains, the hot summer days and the brittle winter cold that were no match for the old car—rolled unceremoniously out into the woods or what was once a field and left for dead. Its sheet metal had become paper-thin, the rust was now the color of the earth that surrounded it, that it was sinking into, was returning to. Sometimes a sturdy chrome bumper held fast, just at ground level—the rest of the car slowly lowering to meet it. Time had done its work—not aggressively or in a showy manner; but little by little, the inexorable forces had hammered away at the machines out there, slowly coaxing them to a thorough and peaceful destruction.
Some of the other cars were more recent, even had motors and a fairly rare transmission. The one with the motor and rare transmission was one of my favorite vintage American rides: The venerable but little-heralded Ford Falcon. Often these cars came with the standard transmission—a three-speed on the column, most likely. But for a few dollars more, you could ride in deluxe style, eliminating the need for a clutch down there next to the brake pedal. Simply select the gear, press on the gas, and go. This particular car was from around 1964 or so. Although most of the rest of the car had succumbed to the forces of nature, the engine and transmission—being made of more sturdy stuff—were still mostly intact.

We finished our tour in about an hour or so, finding the remnants of what was once a little community out in the woods, and locating about a dozen hulks of old cars. The most recent examples were from the mid-to-late sixties.

Back home I posted an online ad for my work van, wanting to rid myself of it in order to buy a larger truck. I contacted a man in Ohio who has for sale exactly the kind of truck I want to buy. His was offered for sale in an online auction some time ago, and it never sold. I contacted him using the phone number listed in the auction, and talked about the vehicle and the price. He said he needed to sell it for $5,000 in order to pay off his loan and get the title free and clear. I told him I would consider the price, get back to him. I later called him, asked if he could please lower his price to $4,500. This was taking into account the fact that I would have to fly out there, drive the truck back home. The airfare is not that expensive—only about a hundred dollars—but the price of gas is also a consideration. The trip is almost exactly four hundred miles. He said he would see what he could do.

I should add that it would make more sense to find a similar vehicle right in my area and just buy it. The problem is that these trucks are fairly scarce, and command premium prices around here. Out in Ohio they seem to be more reasonably-priced, even taking into account the cost of transporting the truck back home.

I went over to the other house, just to be able to say I did something—anything—in the way of meaningful work. This was later in the afternoon, after the sun had set, and the house was fairly chilly on this cold day. With my heavy work-jacket, dust mask and gloves, I was soon fairly warm. I went down in the basement to see what I could do to rectify a problem up at the entrance of the house. You see, just as you enter the front door, there is a section of floor that was once patched. The floorboards match up pretty well, but there is a noticeable soft spot—so noticeable that, if you walk upon that section just right, it feels as if the floor is going to give way and you’ll end up falling straight down into the basement. This isn’t exactly the effect that I wanted visitors to the house to experience. There is no real danger, but the situation must be corrected.

I looked at that area from below, found that additional support was needed in the middle of the patched area, and cut away some unneeded pieces of wood that once supported the drop ceiling down in the basement. Now the floor was more accessible, and I would be able to screw into place some sturdy lumber that I have on hand. Fastening it directly to the floor joists, it should have the desired effect of making the floorboards upstairs feel sturdier—not like they are going to collapse beneath the weight of a particularly heavy person.

As I was down in the far recesses of the basement, I came across two small bags of poison. Fearsome stuff, labeled with the distinctive skull and crossbones, it was identified as “Arsenate of Lead.” I carefully removed the two bags from their hiding place, put them into a plastic-lined box, and sealed it up. I then threw away the gloves I’d used to handle the bags with. This stuff had been bought at a local hardware some fifty years ago, this kind of thing being pretty much the norm back in those days. It was used as an insecticide, a rodent-killer, and some other things besides. People applied it to their vegetable gardens to ward off or kill certain pests. I can’t even imagine; just saying the words, “Arsenate of Lead,” sounds like it should be toxic. But the family man back then, in his big pants and large, rounded car, thought nothing of it. Walking into the hardware to buy some screws, a sheet of screen for the storm door, maybe some tikki torches for the weekend barbecue, might pause—there was something more, something he’d forgotten:

“Oh, yeah,” pointing to a spot high on the store’s worn wooden shelves, “Gimme a bag of that rat poison.”

The store clerk would comply, putting the poison in the bag—along with the screen, the metal screws, the tikki torches. Out on the street, the family man in his big pants would throw the stuff into the massive car, put the machine in motion, and head back home. It was 1956 and everything was good for you.