"I've been thrown out of better places than this."
That's a line I heard on TV recently, and it brought to mind the time that a buddy and I were ejected from a junkyard.
When I was in high school, this kid named Leo K. decided that I was his best friend. This cost me dearly in popularity at our school. Leo defined the bottom of the social strata: he was received with marginally more enthusiasm than the approach of a plague-infested syphilitic leper with acne. Even my tolerant and long-suffering mother referred to him as "that goat faced halfwit." Leo was arguably the most offensive human being I have ever encountered. Don't ask me why I hung around with him... I just did.
Leo got his driver's license earlier than most of us because he spent several years repeating first, third, and fifth grades. His cars were often so decrepit that they no longer even possessed scrap value. This in turn caused him to spend nearly all his free time at the local salvage yards attempting to cannibalize enough parts to keep his vehicles running.
It was at one of these fine establishments that we wore out our welcome.
Leo had come to my house to pick me up for a scavenger hunt at K&R Salvage on a quest for an intake manifold for his clunker. K&R Salvage was one of those places where you tell the proprietor what you need and he tells you where you're likely to find it. You then proceed to that area and remove the parts you need yourself.
We found the appropriate area, located a compatible donor wreck, and set to work retrieving the manifold. The car's hood hinges were in pretty dire straights, so we found a piece of metal to prop the hood up while we dismantled the engine. Actually, I did the dismantling; Leo just wandered around and mowed down on a liverwurst sandwich he pulled from his pocket.
Leo often carried food in his pockets. And he did so without benefit of a baggie or other such barrier that would keep lint, dirt, and microbes away from the eats. He didn't seem to mind ingesting things that were only a little moldy, either. "Just scrape it off, it won't hurt none." Leo mentioned to me that this day's pocket repast was the survivor of a picnic from the previous week.
I was busily busting my knuckles under the hood when Leo began to complain of a bellyache. He stood next to me and broke wind a couple of times to demonstrate that his gut was off. I doubted that his sandwich could have yielded any untoward effects this soon after ingestion, so I ignored his increasing complaints. Abruptly Leo announced that he needed to perform an emergency evacuation of his bowels. I figured he was going back to the office building and would ask to use their restroom, so I continued to work at tearing the engine down.
Suddenly I heard a moist and unpleasant sound, rather like high-pressure compressed air being run through a set of bagpipes into a vat of pudding. A miasma of noxious fumes assailed my nostrils.
And then, from a short distance behind me, I heard bellowing. "What the hell...goddam it! You goddam fuckers get away from that car!"
Startled, I raised my head quickly, hitting the underside of the hood and dislodging the piece of metal that held it aloft. The hood came crashing down, knocking me off my feet, effectively pinning me beneath it and planting my face against the hard greasy block of the engine. Muffled yells came from outside the engine block as I tried without success to extricate myself from the engine compartment. The smell I had detected earlier permeated the air.
A moment later, the hood was yanked off my back by a large, red-faced, angry man. I was abruptly jerked out from beneath it and unceremoniously deposited on the ground, on my butt. I still had no idea what was happening until I saw Leo standing with his pants around his ankles beside the car, liquid discharge from his bung pooled all over the back seat and floor.
I stared at the mess in absolute disbelief. I didn't think even Leo would be so totally stupid as to take a shit in the back of the car. The large, red-faced, angry man happened to be an employee at the junkyard who was apparently charged with observing patrons to ensure that no one absconded with parts they didn't pay for.
He was most agitated, to say the least. He proceeded for the next several minutes to spew a torrent of profanity-laced venom at us. We were then marched without dignity or fanfare to the front gate and told never to come back.
Over the years, I lost track of Leo. Thank goodness. Although now I can look back on the absolute absurdity and laugh, at the time I was never more mortified. And I still don't dare go back to that junkyard.