Sentimental Sunday - Grandpa's Junk Yard

My Grandpa was cool. He owned and ran a pretty popular junk yard. It was full of old cars that did not run, old and I mean really old farm machinery, sheep that meandered in the rows and many other items. He would sell parts to machinery and parts to cars. People would stop by quite often. After all it was right off of a main highway.

I can remember my Grandma standing by the kitchen sink pealing potatoes, snapping beans or shucking corn from the fields. There was a window above the sink to look out of. Sometimes a truck would pull in with a trailer full of metal. She would shake her head and say "oh my, he went and bought more junk". That used to make me laugh.

This place of course was in Ruthven, Iowa. When the cousins would stop by, us kids would go out to the rows of cars and hop from one car to the other on the roofs of the cars. Sometimes there were twenty in a row! Funny thing - I never remember any of us getting hurt. The cars as I remember were pretty close together so we could do this easily. It was thrilling! My Grandpa would never complain when we did this. We could have really done some damage to the cars, but he did not care!

What a neat Grandpa.
Stuart Donald Davis
Born April 18, 1902, Grinnell, Iowa
Death March 18, 1993, Ruthven, Iowa
Buried Crown Hill Cemetery