The fabled
institution that I write of is Nissenbaum's Auto Recycling Center. It's
a family-owned business that provides end-of-life care to tired and
totaled autos, and it extends the lives of those needing organ
transplants. Those of the deceased's remains that cannot be reused are
sent to the smelter, making things a little easier on the planet.

The
company has provided recycling services since before recycling was a
word or motorcars were on the road. Family patriarch Jacob Nissenbaum
grew up in Brest, a city in Belarus, on the Polish border and fifty
miles from the German border. Brest's location ensured that it was
regularly overrun by invaders, from Mongols in 1241, to Teutonic
Knights in 1379, to Swedes in 1794, to Nazis in 1939.

Jacob
immigrated to the U.S. around 1880 and settled in Somerville. During
the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, Somerville had so many
slaughterhouses that it was called "the Chicago of the East." In 1910,
Jacob began a business that recycled bones collected from meatpacking
operations and sold them to soap manufacturers. The family business has
remained in the same Columbia Street location ever since.

Jacob
begat Joseph, and the company recycled rags. Joseph begat Max, and it
recycled metal and newspapers. Max begat Joseph and Allen, and in 1956,
Nissenbaum's began recycling automobile parts.

Hard work has
always been a family characteristic. Allen and Joe, and now Joe's son
Neil, all began working at 10 or 11 years old, taking the bus to the
shop. They still put in 10-to-12-hour days, 6 days a week.

Over
time, the business continues to change. When they started recycling
autos, they hand wrote tickets for each part and kept them on file.
Books thicker than unabridged dictionaries told them which parts were
interchangeable among makes, models, and years. Now, a computer program
rapidly performs both functions.

Automobiles themselves have
changed. Their growing complexity and high-tech systems have reduced
the number of shade-tree mechanics.

Still, there are 14,000 auto
recyclers in the U.S. who, collectively, are its 14th largest industry.
About 45% of aluminum cans are recycled, while 90% of the materials in
cars are recycled. And while interchangeability of parts is
diminishing, much remains.

Customers often don't realize that
they can ask a mechanic to install a used part, or that they can bring
to the mechanic a used part that they have purchased themselves. Both
used and new parts have a 20% markup, but mechanics like to use new
ones because the markup is off a larger base.

Meanwhile, the
media have discovered Nissenbaum's. MTV's reality show, The Phone,
featured an elimination round in which contestants followed a treasure
hunt through 25 cars, looking for the getaway car's keys.

Time
Warp's schtick is to perform any function faster than is conventionally
done, film it at 2000 frames per second, and then play it back in ultra
slow motion. They said they could turn a car into a pancake much faster
than Nissenbaum's car crusher. So they rented the tallest crane they
could find and dropped a ton of bricks on the unsuspecting vehicle,
getting the job done in a second and a half.
(http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/time-warp-bricks-vs-car.html)

Neil
told them that it took him 10-to-15 minutes to remove a door. They said
they could do it in a fraction of a second, filled the car with
explosives, and removed the other three doors and the roof as well. Of
course the parts weren't exactly reusable.

Tom and Ray Magliozzi
took a picture of Tom in Nissenbaum's parts yard and invited listeners
to suggest captions. The winners appear on the Car Talk website.

If
you've never enjoyed the satisfaction of replacing a failed car part
with an inexpensive-but-effective used one, hard times and climate
change give you two excellent reasons to start. As Allen (Or is it
Joe?) likes to say, "All the other parts on your car are used, so what
are you worried about?"