My Salvage Yard

This past weekend I made some notable progress on my truck project....I successfully removed the rotting and actively disintegrating 58 year-old wooden bed and detached the bed from the truck's frame.  By no means were these efforts technical in nature...it really just came down to some brute force, time, and persistence.  

The first step was to remove the wooden boards from the truck's bed...this was accomplished with relative ease using a crow bar and drill.  Here's a before snapshot:

Here's the during (note my trusty crow bar stage right):

And here's after:

As one might surmise from the carnage laying below the truck, the wooden bed was dry-rotted beyond belief and basically just splintered into hundreds of pieces as I attempted to remove it.  The metal wear strips between each board were also corroded beyond the point of salvage...so those were sacrificed as well.  Basically, this process was akin to peeling off really, really old wall paper that only comes off in small strips--tedious.  My brother had the great idea of trying to re-purpose the wood by using it to make a table...but unfortunately it was so brittle and rotted that my only option was to add the splintered wood  to the firewood pile out back....which leads me to my next point.

Often times life presents us with detours.  Getting the bed off my truck's frame was one of these instances.  In short, I needed a place to put the bed after it was off the truck.  Since my wife wants to park in the garage during the heat of summer, her side of the garage wasn't an option.  I also didn't want to wave the proverbial "big middle finger" to all the neighbors and just plop the thing down in the yard or in the driveway--something tells me that move wouldn't be too well received.  The only practical option was the small, fenced-in area adjacent to the garage.  The only problem is that there was already a ton of crap there:

Obviously, a little organization and prioritization would yield adequate room for the truck's bed.  What this photo doesn't show, however, is the additional truck parts that have accumulated in this area since this photo was taken.  Nor does this photo show the entire stack of fire wood that extends about 8 feet further into the photo's foreground.  Basically, if this was going to work, relocating the firewood was a necessary evil....not exactly the type of activity that comes to mind when you tell someone "Yeah, I spent the weekend working on my truck."

Regardless, I knew this was a mandatory detour in the quest for restoring my truck.  I decided the best place to relocate the firewood was going to be on the south side of my landlord's outbuilding (where coincidently there was already another stack of firewood).  For a moment, I considered stacking all the wood in front of the doors leading into the outbuilding because hey, if he wasn't such a D-bag I'd be restoring my truck IN the outbuilding and wouldn't be contemplating this anyway. But it dawned on me this sort of retaliation might necessitate me moving the wood a second time...so opted for the former location.

46 trips and two hours later I had finally relocated all the firewood to the south side of the outbuilding.  For the record, let me just say that carrying firewood is about as fun as moving rocks...with the added bonus that firewood is really awesome at giving you splinters.  What made this task even more enjoyable was the fact I was doing it in 95 degree heat with the sun directly over head (did I mention I'm a ginger?) and no shade in sight.  By the time I was finished, I was whooped (and a little toasty).  I couldn't help but think of that scene in Cool Hand Luke where Paul Newman's character spends the entire day moving a pile of rocks from one location to another, only to have his guard tell him, "I think I'd prefer that pile be placed back where it was originally."  Fortunately, my landlord didn't show up to tell me that...and I'll keep my fingers crossed he doesn't.  If he does, I'm buying a wheel barrel.

With the wood moved, I was ready to re-organize my very own salvage yard.  My buddy Jim came over to help me lift the bed off the truck's frame and when it was all done I had plenty of room to spare:

I propped the hood and a few other parts between the bed and the white gate pictured above and then covered it all with a tarp to protect it from the elements:

And there you have it....my very own salvage yard!  With this feat of organization, I also now have somewhere to put the cab once I wrestle it off the truck's frame....and then I can start actually restoring this bad boy.  Oh yeah, here's a photo of my truck, Sans bed:

 The door on the right leads directly to the area I am now officially dubbing "the salvage yard."

************DISCLAIMER****************

There's no denying it....this post was a snoozer.  But come on people!  How exciting can you make carrying firewood for 2 hrs?  Besides, my carrying all that wood was so damn boring and painful I feel its only right to help my readers (all 3 of you) share in the experience...what better way than a blah post?  That said, I promise my next post will be more entertaining and insightful.