I really enjoy going to automobile junkyards.
In the world of Volvo 240 restorations, some junkyards are good; some are bad and finding one that lands more than its fair share of fallen warriors is almost kept secret from even other rebuilders as if to protect the treasures one might find there in the future for one’s own use.
Walking though the secret junkyard invites hardly a glance at any of the other cars there as the focus is on one boxy car that stands out among the rocketship designs of new cars. The Volvo usually lands in a far section along a path few thankfully follow.
And when among these old Volvos it is almost like being in an elephant graveyard where the most tired and most ill arrive at their final destination. Other cars- those unnoticed going in- are probably there thanks to an accident which rendered them a total loss to the insurance company and bought a new big screen television for their owners.
However, these boxy Swedish goliaths arrive mostly intact but worn down over hundreds of thousands of miles of travel and offer many, plentiful parts which help to save the remaining brethren from a similar fate.
Walking among these fallen giants reminds me of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem about civilizations gone before, Ozymandias.
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
I should live as long as a Volvo 240.