The king and I had spent months carefully digging through my dad’s shop, barn, and equipment yard searching for treasures. My farmer dad had kept every broken and remotely possible usable piece of metal he might ever need to repair a tractor or a plow. “Equipment yard” is the code name for “junk yard”. It was about three acres of wagon wheels, tin, tanks, pipe, peeling paint, bottles, patina, and rust. It was beautiful and it was overwhelming. We were selling the house and a few acres, including the “equipment yard”. The king would walk me through it all and ask what I wanted to keep. Well all of it of course.
It the midst of all the picking in the equipment yard, I also found myself helping the king clean his own treasure trove . His workshop was 4,000 square feet of more of the same, but only more. This king of mine had taken care of his family with a full time welding business, a little farming, and repairing everything mechanical. All that creative repair takes tools and pipe and fittings and nuts and bolts. I was surrounded by junk.
During this junky season of my life, I uncovered a box of family pictures. My conservative people just did not make many pictures and very few of them were of good quality. In fact, I have the original camera that needs a pretty heavy finger just to press the stiff shutter button. No wonder they were blurry. So, I found this picture that is so fuzzy, you want to blink and squint and put drops in your eyes just to focus. I shared it with my girlfriends at the Dairy Queen on Taco Tuesday, because they had been following my junkyard saga. The minute Nathalie over at My Hall Closet looked at this memory of me, sitting in a little white vinyl rocking chair, holding on to my dog, and talking on a toy crank phone in the middle of my daddy’s junk yard no less – she dubbed me “The Junk Yard Queen.” And so, the blog was born.
Please blink, squint, and use your imagination for a look at the young queen sitting on her throne reigning over her subjects.
Happy Junkin’ Y’all!
