1990
THEY'RE THE HUB OF HIS UNIVERSE
Burrillville man takes shine to
wheel covers motorists leave behind
Indicating that we've reached an especially promising moment in our trip, Ronnie Young steers his gray Mercury Sable station wagon from one tree-lined highway onto another, announcing the good news as we make the turn:
"This road, Route 107, is kind of bumpy."
What Young means by "kind of bumpy" is the kind of bolt-rattling, bone-jarring, axle-jolting stretch of highway that can give a hubcap that single energizing WHUMP! that tears it, as if with a giant hand, off the rim, turning it into an airborne saucer for a brief, exhilarating flight across a highway.
The kind of "bumpy" that delivers a final
tap to a hubcap that's been hanging on the edge for weeks, but now is ready for a noisy tumble into a peaceful roadside gully, never to travel the fast lane again.
It's Ronnie Young's kind of road, tailor-
made for a man who, since he was 6, has had more than a passing interest in hubcaps.
In 14 years, Young accumulated an astonishing trove of 10,000 hubcaps, which he piled up, row after row of 3- to 4-foot high stacks, in a quiet pine grove next to his parents' home in Burrillville.
-Journal Bulletin photo by RACHEL RITCHIE
COVERED: Ronnie Young Jr.,
Champion hubcap collector
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Ronald Young Sr., his father, described the scene: The sun would strike the chrome columns, and they would suddenly come alive with a stunning, diamond-like brilliance that made the Young homestead on Round Top Road something of a town landmark.
What everyone wanted to know, said Mr. Young Senior, was this: Where did they all come from?
"Right there" says Mr. Young Junior, as he quickly, but not recklessly, pulls his Sable off to the side of the road.
Ronnie and I get out.
I don't see anything, except the dreary, leafless landscape of winter, all brown and black, except for the usual sprinkling of bottles, cans and wastepaper, the hallmark and disgrace of our bountiful, wasteful age.
But Ronnie scrambles along a roadside draped in the sad, gray fog of an unnaturally warm winter day.
Leaning against a bush, on a little inglorious slope next to the highway, is a shiny circle, a "trim rim" for the kind of wheels that don't use full hubcaps. But it still counts.
Young has made his first find of our hubcap-hunting expedition. We've been on the road just four minutes.
*
Hubcaps fall off cars.
They fall off by the hundreds and thousands, every day, every hour of every day, Ronnie Young says.
They fall off on narrow back country roads, on wide interstate expressways, on badly-kept city avenues, on estate-like byways, but especially, on fast roads with surprise potholes.
They fall off Datsuns and Fords, trucks and roadsters, Cadillacs and VW Beetles.
And Ronnie Young gathers them as if they are some sort of ripe fruit that has fallen from a generous industrial vine deposited there simply for the taking by hunter-gatherers of the Machine Age.
He has help. His younger brothers and sisters collect them for him. His parents do, too. And his grandparents. So do friends and some people who are nearly strangers, but know of his interest, arriving at the Youngs' home with five or six they've picked up along a roadside, or phoning in the locations of sightings.
Even the most routine of Young family trips can mean a sudden stop, as someone pops into the woods, or even makes occasional, calculated dashes onto an expressway.
Mr. Young Senior recalls spotting a particularly prized disc - a wire-spoke hubcap - on Route 146 between Woonsocket and Providence.
Traffic seemed light, so he parked on the shoulder and scampered out onto the expressway, leaping, in the next instant, into the safety of the narrow center strip, sandwiched between two guardrails.
"I'm dressed in a suit and tie," recalls Mr. Young. His fear, in addition to cars roaring by on each side, was that a client of his insurance business would see him, hubcap in hand.
"If I had had a bag, I definitely would have put it over my head."
*
Ronnie found his first hubcap when he was 6 and out for a walk with his mother, Patricia Young.
Mrs. Young remembers the road, Collins Taft Road, but perhaps because of the inherently forgettable nature of hubcaps, neither she nor Ronnie remembers anything about that one.
Soon there was another walk, another hubcap. And then one rolled onto the family's property. Ronnie does remember that one: from a Dodge Charger.
If he had not gotten the message before, he had now.
The first six hubcaps or so he lined up in a row against the house. As he got more, he stored them in a small chicken coop. That filled up, so he began building what the Youngs called The Maze, rows or posts connected by pieces of wood, from which hubcaps were hung.
Finally, Ronnie started to stack them in the pine grove next to the house, piling them on the needle-covered floor, first hundreds, then thousands, arranged by auto brand and by size - 13, 14 and 15 inches.
What is it, I ask, that you like about hubcaps?
Ronnie Young, who can tell you the make, the year, maybe even the price of a hubcap, half hidden in a pile of leaves at a distance of 20 yards, looks at me with a blank sort of stare, lost for words.
*
The practical side of Ronnie Young's hobby became apparent when a woman, driving by one day, asked whether she could buy one. Ronnie, who was not yet in high school, was unsure, then relented.
Later it became a matter of course. Word got around. Need a hubcap, call the Young boy. People began coming from other states. The farthest was New Jersey.
Hubcaps may be forgettable, but their prices are not. Young says new replacements sell for $60 and up. He charges about $10 on the low end, or a percentage of the list price for more desirable items.
One of his richest sales was two wire Cadillac hubcaps, which he sold as a pair for $105.
However, his biggest sale came last November, when Young decided to sell the entire forest-full. Young, who works as a nurse's aide at the Beaumont Nursing Home in Northbridge, Mass., was considering moving out of state and knew he couldn't take them with him.
He found George Perry, The Hubcap King of Taunton, Mass., who has an inventory of 90,000. Perry brought in a U-Haul truck to take Young's away, paying $3000 for the 10,000 discs. He had to make four trips.
It was a record pickup, even for The King.
*
Ronnie Young hasn't moved away. Or stopped collecting.
He has begun to restart his collection. He now has 180 arranged in only a few rows, divided into 13, 14, 15 inch sizes, by brand. It's barely off the ground. But it's a start.
"It's an addiction, really," Young says. You begin to see hubcaps everywhere. He can't take a drive, even to a store, without seeing hubcaps.
Which is how we happen to be on this hubcap-hunting expedition.
Show me, I asked him. Show me how you see hubcaps everywhere. So off we go in Young's 1987 station wagon (It's got the kind of wheels, wouldn't you know, that don't require hubcaps.) Within four minutes, we find the first rim.
I'm chatting aimlessly as we go up a hill, suddenly Young wheels into a U-turn, stops next to a slope: a Ford truck hubcap; and immediately he spots another one, farther up the incline: Plymouth Duster.
Another road, wooded area: cone-shaped Volkswagen Beetle. Turning around: shattered remains of a plastic hubcap.
At the fork of two country roads: Datsun 200SX; next to it: GMC truck. Deep down a bushy, steep gully: "generic" replacement. Up the road: Dodge truck, circa "early 70's." Next to a rain-swollen stream: another rusty generic. On the way home: cover only, minus its decorative wire "basket."
Burrillville is really not fertile hubcap country, Young says. But in 48 minutes, we've found 11 hubcaps or pieces, a rate of one every four minutes.
Ten thousand hubcaps?
"I know I can get there again," Ronnie Young says, "if I want to."
SIDE
STREETS
Brian C. Jones