Tanks for the Memories...

Walking through life you meet the most interesting people.  Some people seem to have the talent of being a Nexus for an eclectic collection of people you might otherwise not meet.  I am fortunate to have a couple such people like this in my life.  It was through one of these friends that I met John.  John is into reuse and recycling and has the talent for finding interesting things.

One such thing was an old bicycle long buried under brush at a place that was to be bulldozed.  This bike dates to the 50's by style and looks like it was forgotten in the brush about then too.  It is a rusty hulk.  John cut the rotted tires off of it and removed the scraps of seat material leaving nothing but rusty metal, junk if you will, yet prepared like he has it, the bicycle is a beautiful piece of art.

Good art has a story to tell, be it song, sculpture, or painting.  This bike is a time machine for the curious and you can't help but imagine the events around it since its making.  My heavy-equipment-pimp friend is working on John to get the bicycle so it can become the centerpiece in the new garden he is making for his wife.  This bike really was captivating to me and I didn't photograph it.  Huh?

I believe I have confessed my gearhead proclivities, so perhaps you will understand my divided attention.  You see, john also recently found something else in a pile of metal and bought it for scrap value.  It was sitting off to the side, maybe 40 feet from the bicycle and drew me in like a moth to a porch light.

Some may focus on the surplus beer keg on the back of it, or the horse drawn John Deere sickle mower with the blade powered by the turning of its' wheels ( it is cool), but it was the thing holding all that up that caught my eye. 

It is some long forgotten  model of a tank recovery vehicle.  Who knows if this is the way it appeared when GI's were gainfully employed to use it.

For better and for worse, they don't build them like they used to... I for one would prefer a little armor around me if I was going to go pull out a tank in hostile country, but on the other hand, after installing some new batteries, this old machine drove itself from its resting place and toward a new existence where it will be reclaimed by someone for some use, all yet to be determined.  Everything on this old rust bucket works.  Even the rust is only surface deep and not structurally damaging.  Bust out the scotch pad and the spray gun and viola!; this thing will be ready for the next few decades of... well whatever the creative can think to do with it.

I better go back and get a picture of the bike before it moves on... if it ends up in my friends garden that will be easy, but what a missed opportunity.