I have lived in the New England states my entire life. I never really got a chance to check out what the desert southwest had to offer until the early 2000s. The first time I went to the Barrett-Jackson auction in 2004, I evacuated from that collection of spray-on tans, Hair Club for Men members and surgically augmented trophy wives and headed for Desert Valley Auto Parts, the single coolest junkyard I’ve ever been to.

We used to have old car junkyards in Massachusetts, too. You’d want something like a seat, and some guy would drive out to the car you were looking at with an acetylene torch placed in the back of a trunk lidless Duster, and proceed to cut the entire floor out, because turning a set of wrenches was an exercise in futility when the car was more than two weeks old, let alone 20 years old.

At Desert Valley, though, if you want a fender, a guy rolls up with a small toolbox from Sears, and casually spins off nuts and bolts that look as fresh as the day they were installed. Interiors and glass are baked beyond recognition sometimes, but the sheetmetal is typically pristine.

In an increasingly litigious society, I love that you can just show up there with a camera and walk around for as many hours as you want. Some of the cars show the evidence of a hard life or a tragic mishap, but a lot end up there because people just didn’t want them anymore.

A lot of people like beaches, pleasure cruises and spa treatments. If I could choose anywhere to be that truly inspired and motivated me, it would be here, with a bankroll to buy all the stuff I wanted.