UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, July 8, 1992
5
Farmer's collection of stuff attracts dust and curiosity
People flock to barn to buy and browse
By Julie Wasson
Kansan Staff Writer
Forty miles southeast of Lawrence, set back among curvy, tree-lined, two-lane highways is the town of Lane. And just outside the city limits there is a barn with a big, colorful sign that reads, "C.E. Hay's Farm."
And that's where the fun begins.
Charlie Hay, Jr. owns the 1400-acre farm, which includes five acres devoted to stuff.
His collection of stuff includes car tires, safes, bicycles, commodes and sinks, rusted pipes, sheet metal, and old abandoned school buses, such as the Rantoul Rural High School bus that is now filled with more stuff. And that is just outdoors.
Inside a barn, onto which Hay has built five additions, narrow walkways form a maze through shelves and racks of clothes, glassware, hardware, old records, old books. Tupperware, radios and televisions, furniture and jewelry.
Hay said his collection of stuff began as a junk pile when he started managing the city dump.
"My father was a Quaker farmer and he didn't let me farm on Sundays."
Hay said. "Well, I don't play ball and I don't fish, so I had to find something to do."
Since 1967, Hay's junk pile has grown to a five-acre collection of almost everything imaginable. And even though people bring things out to the farm regularly, Hay and his daughter visit dumps every Sunday to scout out salvageable items.
"We also go to auctions and estate sales," said Janice Cherry, Hay's daughter. "You never know what you might find there. But most of this stuff now comes from people dropping it off."
"This stuff ain't organized," Hay said. "It's just where I want to throw it."
But when a customer asks about a certain piece of metal, Hay can disappear down one of the meandering dirt trails that run throughout the five acres and return within minutes, item in hand.
"He's in love with this junkyard." said Hay's wife, Myrtle.
Myrtle, however, does not share her husband's passion.
I stay here, in the house," she said. "I don't go out there if I don't have to." Customers at the Hay Farm include regular visitors and people who have ventured out for the first time.
dent, said he had visited the farm a few times to buy supplies to build a wide-belt sander.
Don Pemberton, a Gardner resi-
"I've spent about $200 on supplies out here, and with them I'll be able to build a machine that sells for $15,000," he said.
Pemberton and his wife were amazed at how many things could be found on the farm.
"If it isn't here, it hasn't been made." Pemberton said.
"There's just so much stuff here," she said. "It's incredible."
Tracy Schmidt, Denver senior, said she visited the farm frequently after being sent out by an art instructor.
"This place inspires me," she said. "I can just walk through and get hit by ideas as I look around. Every time I come out here, I find new things."
Schmidt said she had found several bargains in the jewelry section, and that she frequently bought pieces she could take apart and make into new pieces of jewelry.
"Ive made some really neat stuff out of things I find out here," she said. "And I love coming out here because Charlie is so much fun to be around."
"Some people wonder why I have so might jung lay around, why I like it," Hay said. "I know it doesn't mean anything to a lot of people, but it does to me."
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