Quote:
Originally Posted by Ta2Don
I'm so glad you take the time to share from your travels... 
Your favorite of the day, yesterday, that OLDS is SICK!!! 
Needs to be resurrected...   |
The olds is super cool. I agree.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ol Blue K20
Thanks for the visual break from work...
|
You're welcome.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Madtat
All great shots, keep'em comming!
|
Thanks, thats the plan.
Last friday I had to go to the twin cities, then north to Little Falls, where I grew up, for the night. I had a saturday morning inspection in Motley and needed to help my mom out with some things. Anyway, I went through St Cloud and north of there on highway 10 is a strip club called Sugar Daddys. Now before you all get your blood pressure up I will say I have never been into the joint and there will be no pics from there. I only mention it because behind the referenced gentlemans club is a hidden junkyard. You can see the shop buildings and some cars/trucks out front that are for sale from the highway, but you have to go behind the fence of the exotic dance studio to get there. I usually try to stop and see what they have out front cuz the owner digs 67-72 Chevys and usually has some around, plus other cool stuff.
Like this...
And this (not for sale)...
I personally like the firebirds more than the camaros. This was a customer car that the shop painted.
And this project...
With a custom chassis, 4 link rear, and I think a camaro front.
And these...
After BS'ing for a bit I let him get back to his paying customers and I finished my drive to Little Falls. As mentioned before, I grew up here. And I can't help feeling nostalgic and sometimes a bit sad whenever I get back home. First off, I haven't lived there since I went into the Navy at age 18. Almost 30 years ago now. Second, I lived in 2 houses in the city limits (others outside of that imaginary line) and both of them are long gone. One was tore down to make better parking for the boat ramp on the Mississippi river that was just behind out house. The 2nd place was a rental that had severe water damage after we moved out of it because the water didn't get turned off, the heat wasn't turned on, and all the old cast iron radiators, the plumbing, the toilets, etc. all broke from freezing. It was abandoned and eventually it became fire practice for the local fire dept.
There was a paper mill across the street (they were the house owners) where my dad worked when I was a kid. It's gone too. Whats left is now a park area with some sections of the original foundation, a couple spiral staircases and a few hunks of machinery.
These are dryer rolls. And interestingly enough, both of these were fairly new. One was from the mid 60's but the other one was built in 1989, probably just before the plant was mothballed.
Inside...
The arched foundation was under the original Yankee Dryer roll. These big rollers here are for grinding the wood to pulp...
Most of the paper mills I have been in chip the wood into flakes and dump them in a digester with an acid solution that breaks the wood down to fiber pulp and lignin. Then the fiber is made into paper. This was a small plant and the pulp was made mechanically. They could only produce card stock or construction paper which is why it was shutdown. There just wasn't enough market for it and they couldn't produce the printer paper or other paper products that drove the market. Luckily my dad found a job elsewhere before the place closed down.
The house here we always called the paper mill house. They owned it and it was across the street from the mill. It's also where we lived when my dad bought my C-10 from my grandpa. Dad walked to work of course, but I remember many winter nights and mornings when dad would come home (rotating shifts) go start up the truck (always started ez) and go back to the mill parking lot to jump start the cars that wouldn't after sitting for a shift. This was around 1976-79.
Funny thing is that years later when we lived out of town and I was driving the truck to high school, many mornings the battery would barely turn it over. If I pumped the gas pedal about 6 times and could get it to turn even a little bit it would fire right up.
The other house we lived in was called the boat landing house. I spent many days down by the river. It was about 150' from our back door. I caught crayfish and skipped rocks. I got to be a very good rock skipper. And not too bad at catching crayfish either.
Just upstream a half mile or so was a train tressel that crosses the river. One night while we were having supper we heard the loudest crash and thunder of noise ever heard in my short life at the time. We all ran outside to see what happened. The first unusual site was whole train cars and pieces of train cars floating down the river. When we got down to the landing and looked north we saw that half of the tressel was in the river with a train on the tracks, and more parts of the train floating down stream. It was scary and awesome and I'll never forget it.
I used to fish from the cement footings for that tressel. It crossed the river right by the boat plants on the west side (Little Falls is home to Chrestliner, Larson and Glastron boats). The boat landing house was on the east bank. I would look down the length of the tressel and could never muster the courage to cross it. It seemed a mile long through my young eyes and at the time it was a very busy track. Friday I walked out there...
Looking downstream from the middle of the tressel...
Seems I have always lived by the river or train tracks or both. That's enough reminiscing for now. I'll post more stuff later.