I’m visiting a rural part of the southern US, and I have noticed that about 2/3 of the houses outside the town have yards full of cars and tractors in various states of disrepair, as well as tons of other miscellaneous stuff. Why is that? Is it kind of a culture of self-reliance and a supply of spare parts? Some other reason?
Just because they look rusty and old doesn’t mean they’re junk, but even if they are, there will be no urgency to dispose of them. Most people who aren’t minimalists don’t dispose of things except for aesthetic reasons, unless they’re out of room. Many rural people have a relatively narrow scope for aesthetics that doesn’t include what you might call the front yard, and being rural, it’s really hard to run out of room. Therefore, there is no urgency to dispose of stuff that has become “junk”, and when you do, you will probably do it all at once, as a project, once you start feeling like you’re running out of room, which takes quite awhile, so you’re very likely to see the development of the junk pile in its intermediate stages.