When I was fifteen, I bought my first car from a junkyard, and most of the parts I used to repair it came from junkyards. I licensed the newer (just don't look too close at the paint) model car with only 7,000 miles on it, the same day I got my drivers license.

It was a lot of work and scraped knuckles that summer, and took all the money from my part-time job, but it was a great time in the life of a teenager who was completely and totally obsessed with having their own car.

I could not count the number of junkyards that I have been to. As a child tagging along, they were mysterious places that amazed me. From the antique rusting hulks, surrounded by high weeds to the current models being stripped of parts, whether crashed or just worn out, I always wondered what happened that put them there, sometimes praying silently for the occupants, when that much is obvious.

Bumper and left turn signal: $75.00

Gas to drive to the only place that had the parts: $14.50

A risk-taking teen, like I was, becoming aware of how cars can look after impact: Priceless!

That brought back some memories of a long time ago in another place.

There's no self service here. You can take as long as you like to pick and choose or ask a runner to troll for you. An agile young man employed by the salvage yard will remove the parts for you and even install it on your car. The salvage yard will pay you the kg scrap value for the bits you leave behind.

I have a personal bone yard in my shed'o'sh*te for all sorts of things, some automotive and a lot of other. It's 100% self serve in there. The scrap? Well.....a bloke never knows when he might need something like that, better hang on to it.

A self serve junkyard is a little like a pay-to-play shed'o'sh*te.

Some of the yards in the UK now will not let you remove the parts yourself but it was useful to have a practice run with the fitting, it is not always obvious how to remove trim etc. to get to the part in question.

I can still remember long ago travelling home on a bus with a cylinder liner, piston & con rod. Nobody wanted to sit near me as I'd managed to dump a sump full of oil in my lap during the removal.

In the U.S. it's a question of liability.

Before Pick-A-Part and other self-serves, were little country junkyards that didn't want to bother pulling your parts.

Out in the weeds in the late '70s I ran across a '58 Cadillac with the unusual Air Conditioning upgrade occupying half of the trunk (leaving enough room for a family of three) with giant clear Plexiglas tubes running up the inside of the rear window.

*sigh*