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There is no telling where these farm implement wheels came from. They were part of Sam Strong’s vast collection at his junk yard on East Blackjack Street. Photo taken about 1968 courtesy of the Historical Museum. | submitted photo
When heading east in the 1950s and 1960s, just as highway 6 curved there was an interesting collection of items on the right side of the road that was sure to catch your attention. It was Sam Strong’s Junk Yard.
This particular junk yard had an amazing collection of metal. There were wheels from all types of farm implements, front bearings from Model T Fords, and angle iron of every size. Though his metal salvage business must have put food on the table, there were always a few items that must have seemed interesting enough that they didn’t get shipped out to be melted down.
A walk through the yard was somewhat of a trip to an earlier time when more metal was built into cars and farm implements were simple. The rust was just a patina used to give the salvage items more of a rustic look. If you wanted to learn about blacksmithing in the past, you came to the right place.
By the mid 1960s, people were removing their floor furnaces and replacing them with central heat and air. The left over floor furnace gratings found their way into Sam Strong’s junk collection. He must have had quite a collection at that point, when Wade Cowan realized that a floor furnace grating was perfect for cooking hamburgers and steaks on. After word got out, those gratings disappeared in just a few weeks. Yes, what had looked like old rusted metal ended up being just what was needed to cook the perfect meal.
Sam must have had a brisk salvage business, because he was the one that did the salvage of the steel rails when the Wichita Falls and Southern Railroad went out of business. The people who drove by and thought this yard was an eyesore just didn’t understand that is was just a collection of treasures that were being held for the right buyer to come along.