Adventures of Junkyard Dog & Fluffy

Williams Recycling Company
601 Hill Ave.
Crestview, FL 32536

Ph: 850-682-6968

Call for appointment to see cars.

The salvage yards history is presently changing and not good for the old car collectors. This is a short story of another trip that I have taken on the word of a friend and later the son of the salvage yard owner. I’ll start at the beginning and bring you up to date on how this all came about.

Kathy and I took a vacation to our old hometown in 2005, Cradock, Va., in the Chesapeake area and I was visiting some old friends, with my brother, during this visit. WN is the owner and operator of this truck stop and full service center who also likes old cars and Texaco memorabilia. He informed me, that one of his employee’s father has a junkyard in FL close to where I live. Getting the general location from WN and 3rd party at that, it sounded like a yard that I had previously visited and I would call the yard and validate the owner’s name. As time went by it turned out not to be that yard nor was I in the correct part of the state. This last visit, I was again asked about visiting this yard and I told WN I needed to speak to his employee to get better directions. After a number of phone calls I did speak to Mr. Chester Williams who is enjoying his 81st birthday on June 04, and trying to retire from the yard he started in 1968. In our conversation he indicated he had retained about 20 cars that the crusher shouldn’t have and someone could enjoy rebuilding.

’62 Chevrolet green Impala 2dr.SDn ’62 Chevrolet black Impala 4dr ’55 Ford Fairlane 4dr  ’84 Ford F150 blue/red truck ’51 Chevrolet 2dr fastback '53 Chevrolet power glide 2dr sdn  ’50 Buick 4dr sdn ’52 Chevrolet 4dr sdn. ’59 Cadillac 2dr hdtp  ’65 Chevrolet nova 4dr sdn

’51 Dodge Coronet blue 4dr ’50-51 Chevrolet tan 4dr ’60 Chevrolet GMC black truck ’72 Plymouth 2dr Hdtp ’51 Chrysler Windsor green 2dr cpe ’64 Comet 2dr hdtp ’51 Chevrolet 2dr cpe ’65 Buick Wildcat Conv. ’46 Ford 4 dr. ’73 El Camino

Mr. Williams and grandson are presently still collecting scrap metal, mostly aluminum and using their crusher, on site, to turn a truck load of cans into a 600lb block of crushed bailed aluminum for the market. With the price of metal skyrocketing a couple of years back, most old yards unloaded everything they could to cash in on the market. This left very few cars for the collector. I also notice that most of these owners have been in the business between 30 and 40 years and are presently looking for full retirement or a way out. If you think about it, most of them are vets who took up work after one of the wars working on cars or some business connected to cars. Selling parts and wheeling and dealing was a way to survive and after all, that’s the name of the game. The above is a good example of a person having a full life with a lot of talent and raising a family with many adversities. It was a pleasure to talk with Mr. Williams about his time in the service and 1957 Golden Glove Title heavyweight champion as a boxer. The local paper has also acknowledged his life in the salvage business with a good story published on June 5, 1995. It can be seen posted on the wall in his garage as you walk in. His grandson Chester Williams III took the time to show us around and was as good to us as his granddad. You can’t help but to have respect for this family.

Yard visit was: June 25, 2009

Jack Hanbury

1972 Plymouth	1951 Chevrolet	1951 Chrysler Windsor Coupe
1950 Buick & 1965 Mercury Comet	1959 Cadillac 2 Dr Hardtop	1965 Buick Wildcat Convertible
1951 Dodge Cornet	Chester Williams & Grandson	1955 Ford Fairlane
	Grandson at working crusher (note the bales of aluminum cans in background).