Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, and that is the case of an open field at the corner of Kendale and Beaver Dam roads, just a couple miles west of Five Points. Amidst the boom of new housing rests a sleepy old school bus surrounded by all shapes and makes of comatose cars. I live down the road from this field of forgotten stories and have been drawn to it since relocating here from the Bronx in 2002.
“What a dump,” bemoan some first-time visitors to my home.
“No! No! Not a dump at all.” The 50-plus vehicles, most of them partially hidden among brush, have certainly lost their luster but their sprawling image of what once was…intrigues me, somehow calms me.
Remnants of broken shacks spot the acreage, hinting that the land was once a working farm. However randomly they’re positioned, the weathered structures seem to have helped create designated sections, a bit of sorting out. A small car zone, the eight cylinders over there; a cluster of the orange cars assembled near Kendale Road, perhaps an attempt to color code the collection. Strewn and battered farm machines look as though they were abandoned in place at the end of their last day on the job.
How did soy and corn become metal and wheels? Is it true that the collection served as special effects for movie sets? I am too much of an anonymous New Yorker to ask the nearby homeowners for the true backstory. Frankly, I’d rather not know. Not my business, but no matter what happened, I sense that at some point before I discovered the car farm, its hope had hollowed into the tsk-tsk of newcomers concerned about property values!
Now the Mustangs and Corvettes, Fords and Buicks and the aging school bus are about to disappear to make room for Ergot’s Estates. I will miss the bus stop, the landmark where I turn to avoid Beaver Dam traffic.
I will also miss wondering about the 1950s and 1960s teenagers and retirees who owned those once drivable cars, miss hearing the dreams and heartaches that hum around their silenced engines. I will miss guessing about the untold stories of those pastured cars; stories of drive-in movies, roller skating servers of milkshakes and burgers, back seat loving, and driving lessons that included mastering a clutch.
Big bumpers likely held local and out-of-state license plates and many would have rattled with cans wishing newlyweds well. Their air was not conditioned. Their push button AM radios played Elvis, The Everly Brothers, Patsy Cline and the Supremes. In the quiet I think I hear the faded voices of the school bus drivers, perhaps a Mr. Gus or a Miss Bertha and the hushed tones of children’s laughter and songs, afterschool fun long since lost to cellphones.
Days are numbered for this one-of-a-kind Lewes address with its yesterday’s yearnings. So take a ride. Look beyond the rust, rubber and ruin. Call me crazy, but I hope you sense the car farm’s spirit as I do, an appreciation of what and who came before us. Get there before it’s lost and gone forever, replaced by a second home for another New Yorker who drives an oversized SUV as well as a dull but safe sedan. Feel good with memories.
Kathleen McGlade
Lewes
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