This weekend, we went up to NW Indiana for a visit...
On Saturday when we we're having lunch with Kurtis, he gave me a heads-up that "fuzziememories" had posted a ton of clips from WFLD-TV, Channel 32 in Chicago dating back to the 1970s and 1980s. There's a lot of local "standard" commercials from that era, some Son of Svengoolie clips, and some other miscellaneous stuff. The commercials include all of the Chicago standards... Empire Carpet, 1st Metropolitan Builders, Celozzi-Ettleson, Victory Auto Wreckers, and my personal favorite Boushelle (HUdson-3-2700, below). Talk about a fabulous trip down memory lane...
On the way home, we passed Wrecks, Inc., the former junkyard near Whitestown, Indiana. Their fabulous sign still stands, but the place has been closed for a coupld of years now. As we drove by, I reminisced about how the place used to be absolutely packed on Saturdays, their unique queuing system where the guy calling numbers would constantly re-write your position in the queue on your index card, and the death-trap you'd ride in to get to the vehicle(s) that would yield the part(s) you were looking for. Sadly, the last time I was there in 2001 business had dropped off sharply and they weren't even open on Saturdays anymore. A couple of years ago, the value of their land reached a point where it no longer made sense for them to operate as a salvage yard and they sold out to a developer. I miss the neon glow when driving past their sign at night as it always reminded me of how my dad and I would get a chuckle over the "WE MEET BY ACCIDENT" slogan when we'd drive past on I-65 when I was a kid. No matter how many times we'd drive past it, one of us would always have to point it out.
