Just back from the road, again, this time taking some vacation to unwind from the grind. One of my favorite destinations for travel is any of the central United States west of the Mississippi River. Because I spend much of my vacation time searching out salvage yards, I find the dryer climate of this part of the country conducive to finding yards full of solid metal rather than rusty hulks.

This trip, due to being only five days in duration, didn't allow for any long-distance journeying, so I stayed close to home (Wisconsin), focusing on Missouri. I'd hoped to make it to Oklahoma to chase a lead on a long-shuttered salvage yard filled with 1920s-'50s vehicles that is for sale in that state, but I ran out of time. When I arrived in central Missouri, the recent storm that caused so much tornado havoc in Kansas also caused massive flooding throughout the middle of Missouri. I lost lots of time having to drive way west to continue south, due to flooded roads and impassable bridges.

Once I did get to southern Missouri, it was worth all the prior meandering and detours. Much of what I discovered, as always, will make its way into the pages of Old Cars Weekly, but there's one interesting story that I'll share exclusively with my blog readers.

Among the staffers of Old Cars Weekly, we have a pact that when each of us travels, we tend to look for collectibles in the areas we each are passionate about. Co-worker Keith Mathiowetz is "wallpapering" his garage with vintage license plates, so when I travel I try to acquire free old plates for Keith.

While traveling south on Highway 13 in south-central Missouri I happened upon a dilapidated "beauty fence" that had the words auto salvage crudely painted across it. Pulling off on a side road, I eventually found the site of what was formerly a salvage yard that still contained lots of auto parts strewn about the yard and also a residence that had suffered a major fire. As luck would have it, the fence posts defining the property line of the yard were filled with Missouri license plates of many years and many colors. Seeing that the yard was no longer in business, I grabbed a half-dozen of the plates that had fallen on the ground for Keith to hang in his garage.

Driving away from the yard, I saw a man out for a walk so I stopped him and inquired about the history of the yard, hoping to find out why it had closed. It turns out, according to this gentleman, that the residence on the yard property was being used as a meth lab and had caught fire while a batch of the illegal drug was being brewed. Once this activity was discovered, the yard was shut down and its contents cleared out.

I wonder if the former yard owner is now stamping out license plates in prison?