Excerpt from The Cleveland Wrecking Yard (Trout Fishing in America, Richard Brautigan, 1967)

Until recently my knowledge about the Cleveland Wrecking Yard had come from a couple of friends who’d bought things there. One of them bought a huge window: the frame, glass and everything for just a few dollars. It was a fine-looking window.

Then he chopped a hole in the side of his house up on Potrero Hill and put the window in. Now he has a panoramic view of the San Francisco County Hospital.

He can practically look right down into the wards and see old magazines eroded like the Grand Canyon from endless readings. He can practically hear the patients thinking about breakfast: I hate milk, and thinking about dinner: I hate peas, and then he can watch the hospital slowly drown at night, hopelessly entangled in huge bunches of brick seaweed.

He bought that window at the Cleveland Wrecking Yard.

My other friend bought an iron roof at the Cleveland Wreck­ing Yard and took the roof down to Big Sur in an old station wagon and then he carried the iron roof on his back up the side of a mountain. He carried up half the roof on his back. It was no picnic. Then he bought a mule, George, from Pleasanton. George carried up the other half of the roof.

The mule didn’t like what was happening at all. He lost a lot of weight because of the ticks, and the smell of the wild­cats up on the plateau made him too nervous to graze there. My friend said jokingly that George had lost around two hun­dred pounds. The good wine country around Pleasanton in the Livermore Valley probably had looked a lot better to George than the wild side of the Santa Lucia Mountains.

For the rest of it, see here. For context, see here.