Used to have a salvage/junk yard local to me called Kohler's Trading Post. Kind of like what one would see on the "Sandford and Son" TV show in not being about cars or car parts, they just had stuff like storm windows in broken glass lined racked areas full of them, trailers full of racks, maniquins, and other stuff from stores, and in general household junk that was at times valuable antique, other times just junk.
Growing up in the 70's/80's, this was a junk yard - yuck! One failing of my theater teacher that tought me so much, in not taking us there in helping us appriciate what was offered earlier. While in college, on trips back home or down town to the theater I designed at, re-discovered the place but didn't really have budget to get much. Left both behind and with it the need to get stuff unfortunately in these days being able to get stuff but now lacking the source.
Nothing like Salvage One in Chicago - a definate visit to go to in seeing wonders if rich one could get, but both and product in price, more just a place that if you needed a replacement motor for say a drill press, you could find stacks and stacks of them and as opposed to American Science and Surplus - another visit in Chicago, less overstock new stuff, more just stuff bought salvaged no matter the condition in relying the customer to dig
thru piles of just plain stuff and find what ever they wanted, than
track down a sales person to put a price on it. 5gal. buckets full of rusty bolts type of place, a few buildings that seperated more industrial from household
goods verses what was amongst perhaps the rats or bugs in the 50's era corrougated side and rounded front storage semi-trailers out there - big lot one could wander about as long as good tires on the car and or good boots and flash light. Fascinating place - leaky ceilings and all in the buildings in being a shame at times in finding good stuff but water leaking down onto it having ruined it. Great stuff, an adventure every visit every time one visited it in never knowing what you would find.
Loved my visits to the place, too bad that they finally got closed down I think more for the value of the land than for any unsafe conditions. So what the if the households
goods building burned down at some
point, and walking around the lost was a testiment to tires or boots, and one was in going deep into the lot on a true adventure, it was a really relly cool place.
Got a few
track lighting fixtures out of it, some of which I still own in having converted from say
track to short snout
stage type
PAR fixture. The Halo
PAR 46 fixtures especially once I mounted
gel frame brackets to them became very useful. Never a true
stage light out of the place but I was on their E-Mail list should they come across some
stage lighting - something cool about a local junk yard in if they have a customer interested, they might bid or get stuff for you on the cheap.
For one show, I needed a very small stove from about the 1930's. Saw this really cool speckeled
porcelain one there which by todays standards would still be cool, and I rented it for the show. Unfortunately it turned out to be by way of cast
iron too heavy to transport between scenes, but in having it, I was able to make a really good copy, and the rental price with program placement for the source was decent. Loved that stove, this granted my wife would despise it other than from an artistic standpoint.
Lots of motors and antique tools I would be interested in today in finding out they are now gone feeling a loss, but there was also that
Altman Q1000 they had. It had a cracked
lens - no big deal and some bad juju going on in for some reason, the last user installed a something like L5-20
plug and
connector inside the light
fixture. Don't know what was going on with that concept in even as a carpenter to the trade, I knew something was not right there, but had I only the $125.00 to spare back than, I will have bought it up if only for giving it a home and or selling it off. Never in time got that money in returning back there. That was a great find. I'm sure there was other stuff I was not able to recognize back than I would now love.
Too bad the place is gone.