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14 jayplay.
thursday, august 28, 2003
ONE MAN'S SCRAP
The junkyard is home to treasures wothy of a
Chris Baker, Kansas City, Mo., senior, and Nils Gore, assistant professor of architecture and urban design, scan R.A. Guenther and Sons Scrapyard for materials that they could reuse for household items.
By Andrew Ward award@kansan.com Jayplay writer
We arrived at R.A. Guenther and Sons Scrapyard, south of Lawrence on U.S.59 highway in Pleasant Grove, on a Saturday morning. We were greeted by a dilapidated house on the front of the property. The back porch with an old washing machine, a television and a bicycle on it leaned lazily against the house. Three men worked on a beat-up demolition derby car in a large steel-sided barn behind the house. The scrapyard spread out behind and beside the barn. It was hot, but the yard was shaded by several large trees and heaped up mounds of industrial refuse.
It would be better to call it a recycling center, but you won't find any hippies at R.A. Guenther and Sons, 798 E.1250 Road. Les Guenther, Baldwin City, runs the place. He worked for 30 years at the General Motors plant in Fairfax. He "retired" to farm and run his father's operation. Guenther's main job is sorting and separating the various items—air conditioners, cars and automobile parts people dump at his scrapyard.
He walked up to meet us and explained a little about the yard. He collects tons, literally, of construction and demolition leftovers. Guenther receives piles of old air conditioners from heating and cooling companies disposing of old units. He doesn't charge the dumpers. He makes money by selling the sorted and
separated scrap to companies capable of reprocessing it into raw materials.
Guenther says he is falling behind in the sorting and separating. People keep dumping while he is away farming his corn. "When you get up in the morning, you don't feel too energetic with all this waiting for you," Guenther says.
He also explained the difference between a landfill and a
junkyard. "The landfill charges but doesn't recycle," Guenther says. We noted another difference that Guenther didn't point out, scrapyards don't stink.
We told him what we were after. cool junk. We were ready to run off into the scrapyard but we came unprepared. Guenther wore blue jeans and work boots. We wore shorts and tennis shoes. Guenther says boots and long pants are the best way to keep yourself from getting cut or punctured while rummaging around in the yard. We'll remember that next time.
We brought an expert with us, Nils Gore, assistant professor of architecture and urban design at the University of Kansas. Gore is an expert on materials and no stranger to a scrapyard. He constructed a light fixture using a cutting disk from a harrow, a farm implement used to break up and even off plowed soil, and
built a fence and gate from steel rebar, a material often used in road construction.
Gore says he prefers scrapyards that have waste from new construction sites because the sites throw out materials with interesting shapes. "I found a piece of metal with several squares cut out of it. It made an interesting pattern," Gore says.
Gore pointed out a set of leaf springs, used to suspend the rear