July 21, 2004

• The Pack Rat’s Inventory

  A comment from leafylady,
  on my blog about the looters and vandals who’ve been scattering,
  breaking and stealing things at my old home place across the highway
  from where I’m now living, expressed curiosity about what sorts of
  things I have crated away.  Since I still haven’t worked up the
  strength, resolution and gumption to recreate the CFS blog lost in the
  crash, I might as well satisfy her curiosity.

  The things I have stored, for which there is no space in my living
  quarters, fall into three categories:  things of sentimental
  value, things of practical use, and things with little practical use
  and no sentimental value which are either aesthetically pleasing or
  somehow amusing.  Sometimes those categories overlap, and I
  suppose there are a few things I’d find hard to categorize, but for
  most things in my junkpile one of those categories fits.

  I’ve just thought of three other categories into which I might divide
  my stuff:  things I had to get out of the house to make room for
  new stuff to come in (such as when Greyfox moved in) but couldn’t stand
  to part with, things received in exchange for work I’ve done (I accept
  any sort of barter for my readings) or found in a dumpster or alongside
  the highway, etc., for which I could not find immediate use or space in
  the house, and things I never unpacked after we moved here from
  Anchorage in 1983.  That last category includes things that I
  packed up when I baby-proofed the house when Doug was born in 1981, and
  things which were packed for the move two years later.

  Charley and I (he’s Doug’s dad, and we were together from 1974 to 1985)
  supported ourselves during the economic bust following the Trans-Alaska
  Pipeline construction boom by dumpster diving and fixing up and selling
  at flea markets the junk we found.  I have a green thumb and love
  growing things, so for years I collected anything and everything that
  could serve as a planter.  I saved string, twine, cord and rope,
  and made macrame hangers for plants.  Our flea market booths were green. 
  When I moved to the Valley, flea marketing was no longer feasible, and
  by then chronic fatigue was taking over my life, but I still have a
  collection of old coffee pots, rigid plastic ski boots (AKA
  leg-breakers) and similar odd and amusing flower pots.

  For many years I had an ambition to own a restaurant.  I suppose I
  still have the desire, but it’s more of an unrealized dream at this
  point in my life.  Who knows?  Maybe it could still happen if
  I go into an extended remission or have a miraculous cure and a big
  financial windfall (NO–scratch that word “windfall” and make it
  bonanza or something–there was that time I prayed for a windfall and a
  gust of wind blew me off my feet in an icy parking lot.  The
  insurance settlement came in very handy, but made me wary of
  windfalls).  Anyhow, I have been collecting dishes and heavy duty
  kitchen gear for thirty years.  Give me about three hours (to soak
  some dry beans) and two scullery slaves and I’ll be able to serve a
  nutritious meal to a hundred people, easily. 

  Supply some fresh groceries, and I can do it in less time.  One of
  the things the looters took this week was my twenty-gallon stew pot, so
  I’d need to cook in smaller batches, but that’s doable.  I have,
  in addition to my electric range here, a total of eighteen propane
  burners:  three four-burner ranges and three Coleman two-burner
  camp stoves.  Two of those four-burner cooktops are in an old
  school bus Charley and I turned into a mobile kitchen for our natural
  foods booth at the Alaska State Fair.  We did that gig for six
  years, in the late ‘seventies and early ‘eighties.  The bus is now
  one of the storage “buildings” the looters have hit.

  Besides the Christmas decorations they scattered, they did some hasty
  unpacking of boxes and crates I’ve not seen the contents of since I
  moved to this valley two decades ago.  Some of that was of
  sentimental value.  I picked up and brought over here last night
  the baby book in which my mother recorded my infant milestones, and the
  guest book my father’s friends signed at his funeral.  A lot of
  what they unpacked was the heavy restaurant china that I collect both
  as useful and aesthetically pleasing.  I do like the elegant
  simplicity of old-style diner dinnerware.  I also picked up and
  brought over here a few choice pieces of art pottery such as a pink
  1950′s era Franciscan Ware coffee server (but its lid has gone
  missing), a carnival glass plate (now with a chipped edge), and an
  undamaged antique heavy green glass vase that was probably carnival
  prizeware, “slum”, a long time ago.

  I collect pitchers, glasses and mugs in addition to plates and
  bowls.  My mother collected teapots and I inherited some of her
  collection.  Some of that is now gone, and also some rocks. 
  We had boxes of rough agate that Greyfox and I collected on our
  honeymoon stored in the old bus, and when Doug looked for it last night
  he couldn’t find any left.  But, the good news is, they left my
  pavilion.  They unpacked the big OD green canvas quartermaster bag
  that held the top and sides of the booth I sewed together–from 6
  bedsheets with 1500 yards of thread, for doing readings in at
  fairs–and the hardware, etc., but they didn’t take it with them. 
  The pavilion and poles came over here last night, and are still in the
  car.  We were too tired to unpack everything.

  The other major items still in the car are Greyfox’s cameras.  He
  came with a collection of antique cameras, and there never was room for
  them in the house.  We barely managed to get his clothing and
  essential gear into that little 8 X 35′ trailer and the 10 X 16′
  attached wannigan, and there’s no room for them in here, either. 
  They will go into our “spare” station wagon, the AMC Eagle that used to
  be his roadside stand and might end up being Doug’s car IF he gets his
  license and learns to drive and IF we get the Eagle running.  If
  so, we’ll have to find another place for the cameras.

  Formerly crated up and now jumbled about in the storage spaces, in the
  “useful” category, are many pieces of electronic gear that we salvaged
  from dumpsters over the past twenty-some years.  Much of it had
  only cosmetic damage to the cases, and was discarded by the stores when
  they found it had been damaged in shipping.  Charley had worked in
  a radio and TV repair shop and would bring home any bit of electronic
  gear he found.  He still goes over to the old place to “mine the
  junkpile” for things he’s found a need for, as do others of our
  neighbors and friends.  In addition to those crates of stereos and
  such, I had a stack of fitted styrofoam boxes, in which each box fit
  into the top of the next one as its lid, with a lid on top of the
  stack, filled with parts:  resistors, transformers, wires, light
  bulbs, patch cables, etc., and the looters not only scattered the gear,
  they destroyed the boxes–in too great a hurry, I suppose, to just
  unstack and open them (unless they were too stupid to figure out how to
  do it), they tore out the sides.

  Hail Eris!  All hail Discordia!  Chaos rules.

  • 8:17 pm
  • 6 Comments