When the street where I live disappeared beneath a fairytale layer of
snow it soon became mucky with salty mud and then I stopped driving my
precious car and took the bus and the train when I had to go places. I
got a vision of corrosion underneath the hood and the wheel linkages and
rust in the fenders. This made me dream of Aruba, but I went West, to
see the Cadillac Ranch, Amarillo, Texas. Seeing my car, just before I
took a taxi to the airport, I changed my mind and at the terminal I changed
my ticket to Phoenix Arizona, where automobiles do not get rusty and corroded,
thanks to the dry air and mild winters, the ideal climate for wheels and
where my own car would love to be. Although I definitely did not consider
a permanent move to the West I thought why not go and have a look? Isn’t
a bunch of hunches a perfect reason to decide where to go on a short holiday?
After I had landed my smart phone directed me straightaway to Desert Valley
Auto Parts, a vast flat open-air take away of car parts. I didn’t
plan to take parts home for my car, but I wanted to see what would happen
to a car in its after-life. As I learned from the info Desert Valley is
very different from a typical junkyard. It is a place that classic car
enthusiasts might describe as the “mother lode.” It should
be a place of legendary status, like the Fountain of Youth or the Seven
Cities of Gold. Who believes all this will win a legendary hubcap when
he or she will pay a visit. Desert Valley Auto Parts is located in North
Phoenix, Arizona, just south of Happy Valley Road along 7th Avenue. An
unassuming entrance gate leads visitors into the 40-acre yard. Yes, you
read that correctly! Desert Valley is known for both its enormous size
and its incredible variety of vehicles, with over 5,000 cars and trucks
on 40 acres of land. Whether you need a quarter panel for a Cadillac or
a fender for a Ford, you'll find it at Desert Valley. Their selection
includes vehicles from the 1940s to the 1980s, including all of the top
American brands such as Ford, General Motors, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick,
Chrysler, Plymouth, and others. They've got everything from muscle cars
to luxury cars to trucks and vans, and it's all for sale. Also for my
own precious car, so I may prolong his, or let’s say her life, indefinitely.
Another thing that sets Desert Valley apart from the crowd is its buying
procedure. This is not a traditional U-pull-it yard where you spend the
afternoon lugging your toolbox from one row of cars to the next. Instead,
you choose the parts you want and the staff comes by to pull it for you!
This is convenient because some of the cars are stacked two high, and
can be hard to reach.
Fortunately, there's no charge to walk around the yard. Every so often
I will head over there with a jug of water and check it out to see what's
new. Their website even recommends bringing a lunch if you plan to stay
a while.
Some might see it as a graveyard of broken machines, but I see it as a
kind of living museum, a tribute to the classics of yesterday. It's one
thing to read about old cars, but it's quite another to see the swooping
taillights of a Biscayne or the enormous hood of a 1970s Lincoln for yourself.
My favorite section is the ‘Cadillac Row,’ where the finest
cars of the 1950s and 1960s have come to rest. Yes, they really were dripping
with chrome and nearly 20 feet in length. What if had had the money for
it and had bought the white Thunderbird? I was struck by a flash-back
and a flash-forward and in a daze I hired a U-haul trailer in the following
half hour and I hired a Chevy to pull it and organized two guys in the
office, to push the bird on the trailer and hoped the snow would be gone
after I arrived back home.
Desert
Valley Auto Parts Website.
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