Newtown Barns A Heavenly Haven For Relics Collector

By Nancy K. Crevier

One excited exclamation after another bursts forth from Jay Chaikin as he pokes his nose into battered boxes and pulls aside decaying crates to reveal the secrets they hide. He is in his own version of heaven as he and his buddies Dan Quinn and Elijah Parcell dig through automotive parts, gears, fans, fenders, and gaskets housed inside of two weathered barns. And that little bit of heaven, the week of August 13, was in Newtown.

Jay Chaikin is the star and host of the new 12-part series Abandoned, on the National Geographic Channel, which premiered Wednesday, August 22. Along with his partners Dan Graham and Mark Pakenas, Mr Chaikin and the crew of National Geographic take viewers each week on a sprint through deserted, falling down buildings across America, where they hope to find that unexpected gemstone hidden beneath layers of dust and, sometimes, bat guano.

On Tuesday, August 14, Mr Chaikin took a break from treasure hunting in the barns located on the property across from Amaral Motors on South Main Street to talk about his lifelong passion for collecting and repurposing other people’s “junk,” and how Abandoned came to be interested in the late 1800s barns in Newtown.

The owner of JC Woodworking and Reclaimed Relics out of Sellersville, Penn., since 1996, Mr Chaikin has been reclaiming buried treasures in attics, barns, and warehouses nearly all of his adult life. It is a sort of sixth sense, he said, that allows him to walk into a dim, long-forgotten space and see the beauty that has been overlooked. Many of the objects he discovers will end up in his Pennsylvania workshop, where he will breathe new life into them as a work of art, a functional item, or a one-of-a-kind piece of furniture. Other discoveries are dropped at one of the warehouses that Mr Chaikin (“The brawn of the business”) and his wife, Ricki (“my business partner who gives me a budget and keeps me from bringing home every last thing I see”) use to store their inventory, and are picked through once again for value. In a business like his there are a great number of items that truly are junk, and that is why not only one of two 26-foot-long rental vans that Mr Chaikin expected to fill before heading out of Newtown on August 17 was parked next to the barns, but a long dumpster, as well.

“Everyone is crazy about cool, old stuff,” said Mr Chaikin, so he is not surprised that television producers have come up with the concept for a show featuring the hunt for pieces of history tucked in nooks and crannies of dilapidated buildings. The hunt is not just about finding items of great value, though, for Mr Chaikin.

“Everything has a story behind it. I can pick up something and see what it can be, whether it is wood or steel,” he said. It is a gift he has had since his days as a child in Buckingham, Penn., “the biggest exploration area I ever knew,” Mr Chaikin said. Coming across shards of glass or old bottles as he meandered the hills, he came to recognize that there was some worth to the discarded items he found. “I would schlep things back home. I just had a feeling, I just knew what was old and worthwhile,” he said.

The barns on the Amaral property in Newtown are an architectural treasure, said Mr Chaikin, and he is thrilled to be the one to sort through this bit of Newtown history.

“I swear, it is God’s plan that this all worked out,” said Cathy Amaral Freitas, of Amaral Motors. Before Abandoned even entered their lives, she said, way back last winter, she and her father, Daniel Amaral, had been thinking about the need to empty the barns, with Newtown Hook & Ladder Volunteer Fire Company interested in the property for a future fire house. They toyed with selling off lots of auto parts, offering someone “a huge amount of inventory,” or even renting storage pods.

“That meant that we, as a family, were going to have to physically move this stuff out,” said Ms Freitas.

The Amarals never dreamed that a television show would come to the rescue. “It was an answer to our prayers, putting all the people in place at the right time,” she said.

The Chaikins were already working on Abandoned episodes when Ricki Chaikin sent out an e-mail blast to their customer base, asking if anyone knew of old buildings that might work for the program. One of those customers was Matt Franjola of Board and Beam in Kent, Conn., specializing in dismantling antique barns and houses for rebuild or to salvage. Having bought an old barn through the Chaikins in the past, Mr Franjola was on their e-mail list.

Quite by coincidence, Daniel Amaral and his wife had stopped by the Kent business in the fall of 2011, wondering if the owner was interested in taking a look at the South Main Street barns. If the barns were to be taken down, they were curious if there was any value to the wood.

When Mr Franjola received the query from Ms Chaikin, he immediately thought of the barns in Newtown. “Ricki was a little panicked. I guess they were set to film one of the episodes, and something came up that they couldn’t. So they needed to find something right away,” said Mr Franjola. “I told her I had been in the barns [owned by Amarals] and that they were filled with old car parts,” he said.

Mr Franjola contacted Cathy Amaral Freitas, a scout from Abandoned was sent out, and the program went forward.

“My dad [Anthony Amaral] bought the property, that ran all the way over to Queen Street then, sometime in the 1950s,” said Daniel Amaral. “The barns were used for storage and to store some of the new cars that came in to the dealership,” he said.

Over the years, old car parts, documents and booklets, and automobile odds and ends built up in the two barns. “I knew there was a lot of old stuff in there, and what am I going to do with it?” asked Mr Amaral.

When the producers of Abandoned approached the Amarals, and Jay Chaikin guaranteed he would not just be picking through items, but would leave the barns cleaned out down to the last mouse dropping, Mr Amaral saw it as an opportunity to wash his hands of all of the clutter in the barns.

“We hadn’t touched it in years. I knew there were a couple of old cars and a tractor in there. The car was mouse-eaten inside, though, and I guess if you wanted to work on these things, maybe you could bring them back,” he said. It was not a task he cared to take on at this point in life, though, so the Amarals settled on a flat fee with the Abandoned producers and agreed to let Jay Chaikin wallow in whatever riches he could pull out of the properties.

“The tractor really caught Jay’s eye when they were going through it, I think,” said Mr Amaral.

The 1945 McCormick Farmall tractor did indeed catch his eye, said Mr Chaikin, who said he immediately climbed up on the vehicle to direct his crew. “I felt like a king, sitting on my throne,” he laughed. Then he spotted a car beneath a tarp. The 1941 Chrysler Saratoga was a mess, he admitted, but his instincts told him he would be able to restore it. “I called Ricki right away and asked her what my budget was. I had to have the car and the tractor, I knew that,” he exclaimed, “but if she said no, I would be crushed. She’s my business partner. I wear the overalls, but she wears the pants in the family.”

The agreed upon fee got Mr Chaikin his vehicles, and got the Amaral family the perfect solution to the barn problem.

Just the fact that the Abandoned scout told him that the barns were hard to walk into, because they were so stuffed, got Mr Chaikin’s juices flowing.

Filming of the episode, scheduled to run in September, took place in June, but those involved were not allowed to talk about it publicly until Mr Chaikin returned this month to complete salvaging what was not recovered during the filming.

By Tuesday, August 14, Mr Chaikin and his crew were already knee-deep in the salvage operation.

“I have three piles, basically,” he explained. “One is the artist pile, stuff that I don’t know what it will be yet, but I know I’ll make something out of it,” Mr Chaikin said, as he caressed a section of guardrail from that pile.

The second pile was for parts that could probably be resold, and the third pile was for the dumpster. While the piles of carburetors were time-consuming to haul away, and not something that will generate any income, Mr Chaikin’s treasure radar went off as Dan Quinn blew the dust off of an old toolbox.

“Bring it out in the light and let’s see what I can see. This is the kind of stuff that looks like nothing but is so awesome,” he shouted. Pulling a small metal disc from the box, he pointed out the numbers imprinted around the edge of the wheel. “Know what that is? That’s how they used to mark the car batteries. How neat is that?” he asked.

Mr Chaikin is reverent about the historical significance of the items that come out of the barns. “This stuff means something,” he said. “Everything in here was American made, from a time when America was a producer,” Mr Chaikin said. He can relate to the craftsmanship of barn posts hewn by axe, of solid metal parts, and furniture pieces stamped with a manufacturer’s name or signed by the craftsperson who made it. “It’s not so much the stool I find; I envision the guy who used it, and what his life was like. When I find a piece that is signed, it’s like when I sign and date a piece. How cool will it be, when I am dead and gone that the craftsmanship is still alive?” he said.

The most exciting treasure he stumbled across in Newtown, though, said Mr Chaikin, was Mr Amaral. “He’s part of an era that’s gone now and will never be again. His dad started that dealership, and Amaral Motors was kind of like a hub for the people that worked there, for the people that came to one of Newtown’s earliest gas stations. It was back in a time when driving was a luxury still, and a treat,” he said. “The neat thing is, I get why he did what he did, using these barns for storage: he’s like me. He doesn’t want to throw away in a throw-away society,” he added.

What becomes of the barns remains to be seen. “My end goal,” said Ms Freitas, “is that the stuff is moved for whatever the future is for this property. And the stuff is going to someone who wants it,” she said.

Mr Chaikin regretted that restoration of the buildings would be prohibitively expensive, with most of the wood unsalvageable, due to mildew and water damage.

But with the work of cleaning still only into the second day, his glance strayed to a box Elijah had set on the flatbed of a truck. Mr Chaikin’s face lit up and he was quickly running tiny sprockets and bolts through his fingers.

“I’m like a 12-year-old kid trapped in a 43-year-old body,” he laughed. “It’s one adventure after another!”