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Fun was the foundation of the Great American Salvage Co. In 1970 Israel, the son of a Manhattan attorney, left law school for flower power in Woodstock, N.Y. There he learned alternative life-styles, the necessity of making a living, and carpentry. He later settled on a hardscrabble cow farm in East Corinth, Vt., to raise what he calls "organic beef." But he could never pilot his vintage motorcycle past a pile of old junk without stopping. "I'd always been a collector," he says, "but never had enough money to collect the stuff everybody else was collecting. Nobody else wanted salvage then. This stuff was made by craftsmen who worked 40 years just making shelf brackets or paneling, and bulldozers were plowing it into the ground. To me, it was art."
Soon, Israel's rickety barn was stuffed with salvage. One spring day, his lovesick bull crashed through the barn wall and trampled over months of careful collecting. Says Israel: "So it was goodbye cows, hello salvage." Since 1979, the firm has grown beyond Israel's wildest dreams, allowing him other expensive sidelines. He recently opened a motorcycle shop that reconditions and sells vintage Harley-Davidsons. But fan-shaped stained-glass windows and ornate heat registers remain his central passions and his righteous mission. "If the Rockefellers or the Hearsts saw a library in England they liked, they bought it and brought it over here," he says. "I'm just doing the same thing for the average guy."
In Far Rockaway, as the afternoon sun slants through the broken windows, a workman emerges from the basement and yells, "Look what I found!" Israel and the others gather around an old, 10-gal., green-glass water jug. There is a bit of water in the bottom. For a moment it almost seems that these salvage men, so thirsty for the details of the past, might take a sip of vintage 1907. But a 747 rumbles overhead, and the mood is broken. "Should we take the jug?" someone asks. "Sure," says Israel. "Somebody might want it." They pick up their tools and wander back to work.