Junkyard Dogs 4, photo by Charles Crawford

In Old Webster’s Junkyard Chuck writes (in part):

I visited this “junkyard” some 25 years ago having read about it in the Detroit Free Press. Mr Webster had been buying junk cars for years primarily for storage. He would put one type of item in each car: toasters in one, tires in another, generators in still another. When I first saw this curious wonderland of castoffs Mr. Webster had accumulated hundreds of cars. They were jammed chock-a-block through acres of woods behind his General Store, each car with its assigned treasure. Mr Webster would repair many of these small parts or appliances for resale, but clearly at some point this process got out of hand. There were more items than a small army of workers could fix in ten years of non-stop labor.

For my part, I could only hope to document a very small part of Mr Webster’s amazing collection. Those pictures from years ago I’m afraid I have misplaced, but the visual experience of the hours I spent with Mr. Webster was still fresh to me, and I still had a yellowed copy of the original newspaper article that urged me to return.

Now 25 or so years later, the woods was slowly being cleared of the junk and the wonderland was only a shadow. It’s this shadow that I tried to capture in this series of photos.

You can click through to his website for more, and though he asks you to register, I think it’s worth it.