meaner than a

It's hard to find a junkyard in Brooklyn.

Actually, no. It's not hard to find one at all. But it's hard to have a conversation with someone -- anyone! -- at one, I will tell you that. And you will believe me, because if you try for yourself you will be met with the same mysterious, scrap metal-y silence I encountered. (Unless you use some sort of deceptive measure, like asking for a crankshaft for a '87 Dodge Aries (though, of course, I celebrate the entire K-car catalog equally and with great delight).) So, anyway, in the past three days I have spoken to no fewer than eight different junkyards in the Brooklyn area, not counting those whose telephones have been disconnected (2). Out of personal (and professional? I guess?) courtesy, I'm not going to say which junkyards or where. Know why? Because they are positively Masonic in their unwillingness to have a telephone conversation. It's like I'm ringing up the Skull and Bones, Mossad, and the Illuminati, but with car parts.

You are wondering right now (quite correctly, mind you) what the hell I am doing trying to track down a junkyard. Ah! (I am telling you), it's for the badge. I am also reminding you that a scout "ought to have a command of polite language," so watch the "what the hell." Now. While I'm in the process of trying to set up a waste treatment plant tour that will probably a) never happen and b) get me put on some kind of government watch list, I decided to stop playing phone tag and start following another urban waste stream: rusted-out cars. This seemed like both a pretty interesting move, and a visually-striking one (I could get out to a junkyard, take the kind of urban-blight photos people love to put on blogs, that sort of thing). Here's the problem: I'm really, really honest. And when I called up junkyards, I explained my actual reason for wanting to stop by. I even varied the approach a little (sometimes I was writing a short, internet-based article, sometimes doing research for a blog), but still: nothing.

One guy told me, formally enough, that his employers don't allow him to grant interviews. A few hung up on me. The most talkative man I spoke to (though, actually, they were all men, except for one receptionist -- the junkyard world has a glass ceiling still, I guess?) told me, "I learned a long time ago not to talk to the press. It's just better for everyone that way. I like to keep my business in the business." (For honesty's sake, one guy told me he handles six cars a month, which equals out to a single truckload, but that he would give me that number, nothing more, and the contact info for another junkyard that might talk to me. Seriously, this was like working informants on The Wire.)

So help me out here: what's the story with junkyards and their secrets? Was there some kind of 1980s muckraking junkyard expose I know nothing about? Do junkyards hate me?