This past weekend, Drew and I had a date. We started out with a cup of coffee and some journaling, then a quick trip to the library to get some library cards (neither of us had one, and Drew wanted it to be able to access the library’s internet database at home or something.) Then came the fun part of the date. We were off to Pick-n-Pull, a self serve junk yard. I had never been to a junkyard before, and was brimming with curiosity.

Drew had some car parts he was looking for. He’s been trying to fix something on his car, and we also have a dead car sitting in our front yard that’s just waiting to be fixed up. We arrived at the Pick-n-Pull and walked up to the counter to talk with the grease covered man behind the counter. Drew told him make and model for the parts we were looking for, and he looked it up in the computer. He found what we were looking for and gave us a map and a printout of his findings. “Row 132,” (or somewhere abouts there) he announced and then asked for our $2 entry fee. We even had to sign in. And get our hand stamped. I felt like I was at an amusement park.

Then we finally walked through the doors, out into the sunshine and saw row after row of cars. Dead cars. Up on blocks, long forgotten and left to rust. We watched part of the movie Cars later that weekend, and it’s good that I didn’t see it before walking through those doors. I might have shed a tear for those poor vehicles.

We walked through row after row of beaten, crushed and dented clunkers. We found the red Ford Escape we were looking for. Drew was looking for a part in the rear hatch. This Escape had the back end completely crunched in. Drew said, “Well, that’s not gonna work.” We walked around it, taking it all in, and fishing out a cargo net that we thought might be of use. Drew peeked in the passenger side window and found a plastic trash can filled with beer cans. Laughing, he commented, “I wonder if that has anything to do with why this car looks this way.”

Realizing there was no way to get the part we needed out of that heap, we kept walking and found car #2. This was a bit more productive. We were looking for a right front turn signal, and this car had one intact. Drew pulled out his tool kit, found a screwdriver, and pulled that thing out. They weren’t kidding about the whole pick-n-pull thing.

While he was working on pulling that thing out, I walked down the row of abandoned vehicles. It was kind of sad, and made me wonder about what they might have been like in their prime. It also made me think of my first car and how it had been totaled and towed off to a junkyard. I wanted to run back inside and ask them if they had any ’89 blue Ford Tempos. If they asked what part I needed, I’d reply, “Oh, I’m just visiting.”

We wrapped up our visit and walked back inside. Of course you don’t just get to walk out with the junk er, I mean treasures you just found. They charged us a bit more than I expected for the signal, but they did let us take the cargo net for free. Woo hoo! Then we got in trouble cause they saw the camera that we had taken in. Apparently we weren’t allowed to take pictures. Oops.

After we pulled out of the Pick-n-Pull, we decided to drop by the Flea Market, cause it was close and we figured we should continue our redneck date. Drew got a Bud Light and two soft pretzels and we strolled together amongst the trinkets and trifles. The only things we bought were some baby bananas. (They remind me of Uganda, and I always get real excited when I see them.) Drew stopped and checked computer parts and started to get that glimmer in his eyes a couple of times, but luckily we made it out without anything that would clutter our house further.  He got extremely excited about the mini keyboard that had a dj record scratcher thing. It was something he always wanted as a kid, and he was quite tempted to get it.

With that, we ended our date, and headed home, only to discover that the turn signal was too big for our junker of a car. Drew said they’ll exchange, so it looks like we’ve got another redneck date in our future.