Junkyard

“ For material, they use odds and ends of old rigging called “junk,” the yarns of which are picked to pieces, and then twisted into new combinations, something as most books are manufactured. This “junk” is bought at the junk shops along the wharves; outlandish looking dens, generally subterranean, full of old iron, old shrouds, spars, rusty blocks, and superannuated tackles; and kept by villainous looking old men, in tarred trowsers, and with yellow beards like oakum. ”

“ The crook of a hungry finger will bring him to a stand. Or a junkman is below upon his business. Yesterday the bells upon his cart would have sounded sour, but this morning they rattle agreeably, as though a brisker cow than common, springtime in her hoofs, were jangling to her pasture. At the sound—if you are of country training—you see yourself, somewhat misty through the years, barefoot in a grassy lane, with stick in hand, urging the gentle beast. There is a subtle persuasion in the junkman's call. In these tones did the magician, bawling for old lamps, beguile Aladdin. ”

“ The interior of the junk shop was dark and damp, and foul with all manner of choking odors. On the walls, on the floor, and hanging from the rafters was a world of debris, dust-blackened, rust-corroded. Everything was there, every trade was represented, every class of society; things of iron and cloth and wood; all the detritus that a great city sloughs off in its daily life. Zerkow's junk shop was the last abiding-place, the almshouse, of such articles as had outlived their usefulness.
Maria found Zerkow himself in the back room, cooking some sort of a meal over an alcohol stove. ”

“ Why are there no junks nowadays? Surely it would be better for us, body and mind, if there were; for, as for the one, the rocking exercised every muscle in the whole bodily frame, and as for the other, black Care could not enter the junk (at least he did not) , nor weariness, nor “shadow of annoyance.” There ought to be a junk on Boston Common, free to all, and half a dozen in Central Park ”

“ Up he sat on the seat of the junkman's wagon, holding the reins as he had helped Russ or Laddie hold the reins on the big dog Alexis, who pulled the six little Bunkers in the express wagon.
"This is fun!" said Mun Bun.
The horse slowly walked along. Junkmen's horses hardly ever run. There are several reasons for this.
In the first place, a junkman's horse goes slowly because the junkman is never in a hurry. He wants to look at the houses on each side of the street to see if any one is [134] going to call him in to sell him paper, rags, old bottles, rubber boots or broken stoves. ”

“ Alterations of sails and rigging, and no end of small jobs, keep us hard at work till eight bells (noon) once more strike, and we then get our luxurious dinner of a pound and a half of salt junk, with biscuits. But junk is capital stuff for sheathing material, when it is good: unfortunately, however, it too frequently is 'old horse;' and whatever its quality happens to be, all the nice juicy pieces are invariably picked out for the cabin table. Anything will do for poor Jack. ”

“ Where the store was, there is a junk shop now, and it is called The Die. In it may be found, collected together in an heterogeneous mass, a miscellaneous lot of rubbish that even the bearish-like proprietor himself wonders, sometimes, where it all comes from, and whither it all goes. Here may be found the worn out and cast off articles of rivermen: boatmen, wharfmen, raftsmen, and every other class of men who ply their trade in, on, and about the water. ”

“ JOHNNY'S NEW FATHER.
HE cold weather came on early this year. As he ran shivering home from school, Johnny saw, at almost every house, the preparations for winter. Here was a pile of wood, and there a large heap of coal, suggestive of warmth and comfort. Two days more and the important question [88] about the factory would be decided. If Mrs. Miles went away, it would be very desolate. God only knew how they should be able to get along. ”

“ A cybernetics engineer and machine tender, he was down to ten hours a week of work. Many others in the luxury-gorged economy had even smaller shares of the purposeful activities that remained. At night he dreamed of the slagger moving from house to house as it burned, melted and then evaporated each group of junked labor-blocking devices. He even had glorious daydreams about it. Walking down the park side of his home block, he was liable to lose all contact with the outside world and peer through the mind's eye alone at the climactic destruction. ”

“ It’s an auction place. Surely, it cannot be that such wonderful things are sold in a junk room,” exclaimed Mrs. Stewart.
That made the other three look also, and Eleanor added: “It doesn’t follow that just because this is an auction house, that it must be a junk room.”
“Well, I never saw anything but awful junk in the second-hand place in Oak Creek,” explained Polly.
“Even the Denver dealers sell only junk, Nolla. But it may be different in New York. Everything seems to be different,” said Anne. ”

“ The depot was crowded with crushing and elbowing human beings, swaying to and fro—baggage being thrown hither and thither—horses wild with fright, and negroes with confusion; and so we found ourselves in a car, amid the living stream that flowed and surged along—seeking the Mobile cars—seeking the Vicksburg cars—seeking anything to bear them away from the threatened and fast depopulating town. ”

“ So we set sail for the 'Wayfarer's,' and of all the times gittin' to a place—don't talk! We asked no less than nine policemen and one hundred and two other folks, and it cost us thirty cents in car fares, which pretty nigh broke Jonadab's heart. However, we found it, finally, 'way off amongst a nest of brick houses and peddler carts and children, and it wa'n't the 'Wayfarer's Inn' no more, but was down in the shippin' list as the 'Golconda House.' Jonadab said the neighborhood had changed some sence he was there, but he guessed we'd better chance it, 'cause the board was cheap. ”

“ It was, indeed, the next door lodger, who had painted the cornice. He was very large, Johnny thought, to be so p. 116shy; he positively blushed as he grinned. “You come to this shop?” he asked in his odd whisper, as he stooped to judge the fit of his work. “I’m beddin’ down a junk ring; p’raps the gaffer’ll put you to ’elp me after breakfast.”
Bedding down a junk ring sounded advanced and technical, and Johnny felt taller at the prospect. He would learn what a junk ring was, probably, when he had to help bed it down. Meanwhile he watched the tall man, as he brought the metal to an exact face. ”

“ Our Cruise in the Junk.
Just as we got out of the creek we caught sight of a large junk stealing round a point at no great distance from us. Although Mr Hanson and one of the men were wounded, he instantly ordered us to give chase, and away we pulled after the junk, which as we rounded the point we saw was making for one of the innumerable canals which intersect the country in all directions. If she once got into it she might escape us. The men therefore bent to their oars with a right good will, apparently just as fresh, as when they left the schooner in the morning. ”

“ If a visiting “country customer” were to ask them, they could show him which was “Hinkydink’s” famous saloon, and could even point out to him by name the different gamblers and thugs and “hold-up men” who made the place their headquarters. And worse yet, the boys were getting out of the habit of coming home at night. What was the use, they would ask, of wasting time and energy and a possible carfare riding out to the stockyards every night when the weather was pleasant and they could crawl under a truck or into an empty doorway and sleep exactly as well? ”

“ No damage was done, but it was all very mysterious to the junk man. He could not understand what had happened to the horse. The animal did not seem to be sick and had never been inclined to be balky. At last he concluded to take an inventory of the load. Lifting a pile of ancient burlap bags in the rear of the wagon, he discovered eight or ten large boulders, each being about as large as two men could lift. It seemed very amusing to the men working on the highway a short distance away when the junk man by herculean efforts succeeded in dumping the rocks out of the end of the wagon. ”

“ At length, just as it was growing dusk, we got clear out into the harbour, when the wind proving fair, we hoisted the junk’s sails, and stood away towards where we expected to find the schooner. Several times we were chased by English boats, and were twice fired at by some of our friends, who supposed that our junk was still in the hands of the Chinese, who were endeavouring to escape. Our prize was indeed a curious craft; a capital place for playing hide-and-seek in—full of all sorts of odd little cabins and cupboards and recesses in which people could stow themselves away. ”

“ But this factory seemed a great deal worse than any dungeon that was ever invented. The factory would drive me crazy in a week. I was sure of that. In the dungeon, on the other hand, which, though it might be as dark as tar, was still and quiet, I fancied I could at least keep my senses.
A factory is a busy place, too. It is one of the last situations in the world [114] where a lazy person would wish to be employed. You can't be lazy there, if you try. A horse might as well undertake to be lazy in a treadmill. Some people think that factory boys and factory girls have to work too hard ”

“ A great, raw-boned fellow from some mountain clearing jerked at the lacing of his shoes and in a moment was marching barefoot, the offending leather swinging from his arm. To right and left he found imitators. A corpulent man, a merchant used to a big chair set in the shady front of a village store, suffered greatly, pale about the lips, and with his breath coming in wheezing gasps. His overcoat went first, then his roll of blanket. Finally he gazed a moment, sorrowfully enough, at his knapsack, then dropped it, too, quietly, in a fence corner. Close up, men—close up! ”

“ In front is the brick sidewalk, the cobbled street, the bit of open space with Harrier's junk-shop on the right corner; and then the warehouses on either side, all leading down to the slip, Doty's Slip, which is flanked by noble wharves, with huge piles leaning awry and very slippery. The warehouses are roomy and full of queer smells, as if the varied merchandize of fifty years had left something for its old friends, the warehouses, to remember it by. ”

“ The steel cars that rattle on and on through the night carry coal to factories and many-floored department stores. The lighter cars, with frames of wood, transport shipments of goods from the stores to outlying districts where they are loaded on trucks and delivered. Manufactured goods are hurried away to warehouses and depots.
Thus it happened that Johnny, entering as he did at the dead of night, found men still toiling in these narrow burrows where the light of day never comes. ”

“ Some people seem only to know the value of rubbish. They guard old shoes, old hats, cracked mugs, battered tins, as articles of virtu. Some of the wagons were crowded with such cherished trash. Some had been lightened of such burdens by the wayside, and so were snug and orderly nestling-places; but the rat’s-nests quite outnumbered the wren’s-nests.
A small, neat wagon stood near the head of the train. We might have merely glanced at it, and passed by, as we had done elsewhere along the line; but, as we approached, our attention was caught by Murker and Larrap. ”

“ But motionless and silent as they might be, Johnny knew there were at least two persons in that building who were there without leave or license.
To attempt to run down a single individual in the vast plant, with its labyrinth of aisles, with thousands of machines, drill presses, millers, forges, moulders, cranes, conveyors, with its seemingly tangled mass of overhead equipment and its endless underground tunnels, would be equal to the task of capturing a fish with a hand-net on the bottom of the Atlantic. ”

“ The plan of this private parcels post, in direct competition with the present express companies is no chimera.... Every thinking person marvels at the economic waste in the present day methods of city delivery. By your house in Yonkers, for instance, if you happen to live in Yonkers, there now rattles, once or twice daily, the wagons of your butcher, your baker, your laundryman, your milkman, and your grocer, as well as those of the various butchers, bakers, laundrymen, milkmen, and grocerymen of your neighbors, all covering in staggeringly wasteful duplication, the same route. ”

“ And though across this attractive bachelor habitation he stretched a clothesline for the drying of expensive laundry, he was careful to think this line as a brand new one which was never used as a telephone, since right at hand was the genuine instrument.
How Johnnie went to work! When all of the duties of the flat were done, he pulled off the apron and hid it in the wash boiler. He did not want that leader to catch him wearing any garment that belonged to a woman. Neither did he want his newest friend even to guess that he (Johnnie) did any sort of girl's work—in particular any cooking. ”

“ A lot of tents, camp-stools, tin boxes, white cases, brown bales would be shot down in the courtyard, and the air of mystery would deepen a little over the muddle of the station. Five such instalments came, with their absurd air of disorderly flight with the loot of innumerable outfit shops and provision stores, that, one would think, they were lugging, after a raid, into the wilderness for equitable division. It was an inextricable mess of things decent in themselves but that human folly made look like the spoils of thieving. ”