“Where are you taking us?” asked Isabel as we trundled up that barren stretch of 295 towards Mechanicsville in my clunky old Blazer.
“You’ll see.”
A few miles later I sighed with relief as I realized I knew where I was going after all. We pulled off at the Pole Green Road exit and took an immediate left onto Antique Lane. Giant stone and brass statues loomed before us as we pulled into the gravel lot.
I jumped out of the truck and marched between a 12-foot Patrick Henry declaring “Victory or Death” and a several topless mermaids frolicking with a dolphin. “Welcome to Governor’s Salvage Yard!” That’s when I noticed the sign that read “Closed: Sundays.”
“Hell, that would have been worth a phone call!” I said as I pressed my face against the glass doors. “Now what?”
Just as I was about to turn away, a lone figure emerged from the dark interior and waved for us to enter. “Come on in, we’re open on Sundays through Christmas.”
“Have you folks been here before?” asked Paul, our mustachioed host.
“I have. They haven’t,” I told him as Dwayne and Isabel goggled at the glass cases full of antique toys, soda pop signs, pocket knives and other glittering by-gones.
“Then I’ll leave you to it. Holler if you need anything.” He disappeared into the office leaving us alone in the towering maze of tchotchke.
I led us through the central room to a wing stacked tall with old photos, paintings and prints. We paused briefly to take our photo with a giant stuffed buffalo and then flipped through a few dusty frames.
“Come this way, I want to show you the outside!”
We stepped into the vast salvage yard where every imaginable item that could be pulled from a house prior to its demolition was piled on shelves 15 feet high. Bin after metal storage bin of woodwork and mantel tops, street lights and stop signs crowded the narrow lanes. It was like that scene in the Matrix where Lawrence Fishburn stands in a field of endless white and declares “We’re gonna need some guns,” but instead of guns he said “sinks.”
A hundred yards of bathtubs lined the outer wall and between them a miniature stampede of ceramic sheep, porcelain pigs and more mermaids stared us down with glazed eyes.
“This is a horror movie waiting to happen!” Dwayne called to us as we crept carefully through a narrow crease between a teetering stack of doors. Our path opened up into a barn full of barstools, tables, chairs and a decrepit player piano. “Oops! Dead End.”
We backtracked our way to sunlight and went into the main building, waving at the buffalo head as we passed. “How can there be so much stuff?” asked Isabel, gazing up at the hundreds of chairs hanging from the rafters.
Dwayne and I found a bucket full of old woodblock type buried in a room brimming with cast iron skillets. We picked out a few and took them up to the front counter, where Paul happily rang us up. “Did you find everything you were looking for?”
“All that, and everything else.”
It would take years to dig through every corner of the 12-acre establishment and you never know what you’ll uncover.—TP