I’ve spent less than a weekend’s worth of time in the state of New Jersey. But after watching this video, there’s a lot that lines up with hunting in western Washington. Namely, the thick overgrowth of blackberry vines that dates back decades hiding cars and parts that pre-date the vines. I remember coming up on some kind of mid-1950s Mopar that was so overgrown it wasn’t funny sitting in the garage of a house that could not have been occupied any later than 1970 buried a quarter-mile past the end of the dirt road and spending a week hacking vines away, trying to uncover the car up until the property owner figured out that something was going on and I was intercepted and chased off, or the Maverick sitting upside-down and perfectly intact for no apparent reason whatsoever just off the side of another dirt driveway. It’s the treasure nobody wanted to deal with back in the day. That Maverick wound up coughing up the driveshaft that went into a 289-powered Mercury Comet that was as low as I’ve ever seen a Mav/Comet go.
Small parts here and there is one thing, but roaming through a whole yard? Imagine that for a second. Cars that haven’t moved in forty, fifty or more years. Semi-trailers and buses filled front to back with stuff. Old speed parts that haven’t been made since The Beatles broke up. Hubcaps, trim, bits and pieces that just don’t die compared to the sheetmetal and soft bits…the line between junk and treasure depends on what you are looking for, but someone out there is hunting for those and you never know what you will find. We’d spend hours, days even, hunting around to see what we could find. Check out this guy’s scavenging and see what you can spot that he didn’t!
