Episode #005 "Junk…Part 1"

We are surrounded by it. My garage is loaded to the point of no car entry. Our closets are stuffed to the rafters to the point that doors are difficult to close. We got boxes and boxes of boxes and boxes. We got to do something about it. See my plan in Part 2.

My dad was a pack rat. When his dementia started to interfere with his ability to take care of himself, us kids moved him to a nice assisted living facility. He had one closet. At his home in NYC, he had 8 rooms with almost countless closets. His closets were stuffed to the rafters to the point that doors were difficult to close. He had boxes and boxes of boxes and boxes. We had to do something about it.

My siblings did the yeoman work. I traveled down to help one weekend, but they spent hours and hours picking out the memories, bagging and tossing stuff, doing a garage sale (take it please), tossing more stuff. There was hundreds of the Big Box Store black contractor trash bags dragged to the curb. Hundreds of boxes stacked for the junk man and the city sanitation department. My siblings were saints for doing this, dealing with this mess. I could never thank them sufficiently.

Whenever I tell this story, people always ask what he collected, what we tossed, what we threw away. After I say “everything”, I try to give them an idea of what we are talking about. The following is not a comprehensive or exhaustive list but a list none the less that gives the highlights.

Clothes. Besides clothes that no longer fit my dad, there were old kid clothes from when we were all there. There was clothes from my mother who died when I was a teenager. There was clothing that never belonged to any of us, collected by my parents for unknown reasons. Gone.

Boxes of magazines too numerous to count. My dad worked for more than a decade delivering mail for the US Postal Service in Manhattan. Each day he stopped at the dead mail office and picked up a few magazines to bring home. We read them all and an eclectic collection they were to say the least; Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Sport, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, National Geographic, Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, the list goes on and on. He didn’t throw them out when we were done, he put them in boxes and stacked them in the closets and basement of the house. Hundreds of boxes, thousands of magazines, too numerous to count. Gone.

Pens. My dad delivered to office buildings in the city. He would pick up pens and bring them home. His pockets always had several. First he put them in a cup and then into a coffee can and then into boxes. Black and blue and green and red, ball points and felt tips and markers of all descriptions. Loads of them, boxes of them. Gone.

Sweet and Low and coffee stirrers. My dad liked his coffee. When I was young, it was my job to make him some when he was working around the house on any one of his repair projects. He worked in Manhattan. He visited lots of coffee shops and McDonalds and picked up the little pink packages and stirrers – wood, plastic and the like. Boxes and boxes of them. We had to dump the pink packs because to reintroduce the product into the system would have caused the price to drop precipitously. We could have created our own pink pack depression or at least a glut. Gone.

Tools. My dad was wonderful with his hands, always working on something, fixing something to a fault. He collected tools. If I had a dollar, for every hammer, screwdriver and wrench there was, I’d be lying on a beach in Tahiti right now. Gone.

TV Tubes. If you are a kid, this does not mean much to you but if you are my age, you know that before transistors and chips, there were tubes. My dad repaired TVs for a while and built trays to hold the tubes. The solid state electronics put an end to their need, but not to my dad collecting them. Hundreds, thousands, too many to count. Gone.

I miss the pens. We never seem to have a pen that works around here when I need one. Nothing else. Well I miss reading the magazines. Wish I had some to read. Nothing else. Well maybe the sweet and low.