From Prison, Junkman Promises to ‘Fight to the End’

Thousands of people go to prison every year for countless frailties: hate, greed, sometimes love.

Arthur (Frenchy) Cournoyer went to prison for junk--and, he says, a principle.

“This is a country where a man is supposed to have a right to earn a living. And they are supposed to have justice,” said Cournoyer, who has spent 32 years and about $100,000 battling attempts to close a truck salvage yard on his property in the northern Rhode Island town of Lincoln.

His salvage yard was there before town zoning prohibited it, Cournoyer said. The authorities contend that he is an outlaw.

So Cournoyer, 66, finished six months at a minimum-security prison in December for contempt of a judge’s order to clear his property.

“I believe that if I’m right I should fight to the end,” he said in a recent prison interview.

It was his fifth time in prison since 1963--a total of 287 days behind bars, he said.

The quiet, barrel-chested Cournoyer seemed out of place among the mostly younger inmates. His hair was going white. A broom straw dangled from his mouth in place of a trademark toothpick.

“They call me ‘The Legend,’ ” he said. “I keep coming here, they’ll be giving me a pension pretty soon.”

Talk about prison life evoked not much more than a verbal shrug.

“If a man should be in jail, he’s got it made. But a man like me that don’t belong here, you know, it’s still not that bad,” he said.

The headlines of his continuing battle may bring sympathy. But town officials’ patience has worn thin.

“The fact that he’s a colorful person, the fact that he’s quotable and funny . . . doesn’t color the basic fact that the guy doesn’t want to listen to a court edict, which to me makes him something of an anarchist,” Town Solicitor James Marusak said.

Cournoyer’s 32 acres are in a wooded area dotted with split-level houses. His rocky land is now mostly clear but glitters with bits of broken glass from junked vehicles.

A man who has lived across the street for 43 years was bitter about the junkyard, saying the business has been an eyesore and a noise nuisance.

“It’s about time the judge done something about it,” said the 80-year-old man, who would not give his name. He said Cournoyer had sued him twice.

Cournoyer’s father, a carpenter who came from Canada in the 1920s, bought the land in 1946 and hoped to develop it, but it was too rocky. Cournoyer suggested that he start a salvage yard.

Cournoyer has watched at least four times as crews have come to haul away his junk, sometimes hundreds of cars. But he always found more.

“When they cleaned me out, I started running again. That’s what burnt them up,” Cournoyer said. “I did make a living out of it one way or the other. As long as I keep the yard open, I could survive.”

Superior Court Justice Anthony A. Giannini ordered Cournoyer released in time for Christmas, but told him to clear a mobile home, half a dozen vehicles and a garage from his land by Feb. 15.

Cournoyer said he would be content to retire, collect Social Security, work on the restoration of a 1952 tractor truck.

But a truce may have to wait.

Cournoyer said he lived in the lime green ‘50s-style mobile home, and it shouldn’t be part of the junkyard dispute.

“The war is not over. . . . I will make history,” he said as he talked about appealing to federal court, even U.S. Supreme Court.

And if the battle stopped today--the one that has lasted through most of his adult life and taken him to talk shows, newspaper front pages, and courtrooms, as well as prison?

“I think I’d be lost. I’d be like a fish out of water,” he said.