Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Collections

We’ve all seen the pictures of the homes of the hoarders, the out of control individuals swallowed by the mountains of garbage that they have accumulated, but were unable to dispose of, teetering piles of rubbish concealing walls that have not seen the light of day in years.  We all agree that no, that’s not us, no way, unh uh; just keep your nose out of my garage.
Some people are compulsive sorters, labelers and shelvers in their attempts to bring their hoarding under control. My father was one such, and I have inherited those tendencies, but I like to think they are under control.  When he passed on, I looked in his garage and found shelves full of labeled compartmented trays for nuts, bolts, screws, springs, washers, set screws, cotter pins, you name it.  As a small boy I remember going to McLendon’s with him every Saturday, and every time he needed one, he bought two, just in case. I still regret sending the pop rivets off to auction.
Half the battle of collecting stuff is being able to lay your hands on it when you need it, a battle that is lost when you spend hours or days digging through your pile looking for something you knew you had, but don’t quite remember where you put it.  With tools, it’s who you loaned them to.
Half the reward you get when you sell or give away some little gubbin you’ve been sitting on all these years, like those clear yellowed Lucite Stanley replacement plastic mallet tips in the original box that have lived in my toolbox for twenty years or so, comes from the justification that you were right, see?  Let the significant others of the world roll their eyes as they will, one successful placement of a part back in the tool to which it belongs, or one new home found for the odd Harley part, even if it means transportation from one pile to another, means all the rest of them could do the same, right?  It’s even better when you make a profit on the deal!
Beyond that, though, we also benefit society when we scoop up others’ discards and preserve them for the moment they regain their value.  Each finished part represents a certain amount of labor on someone’s part, which takes energy, which can neither be lost nor destroyed as long as the part avoids the landfill or the smelter.  The trick is in knowing where to draw the line.
Every swap meet I ever attended as a seller always winds up with the pack-up-and-head-for-the-barn load, and there is always a small pile of stuff there that just doesn’t deserve to go back in my pile; I’m tired of looking at it, and nobody is ever going to want that anyway, so where’s the nearest garbage can?  One of my favorite tricks was to go to one of the other sellers and say, “Hey, I gotta go, but I want to leave this pile here in my booth as freebies that anyone who wants can take.  Would you do me a favor and toss the remainders in that garbage can over there for me when you leave?”  They’d always say, “Sure, no problem!”, but they’d also have that look on their face that said, “Yeah, sure, after I dig through it first and see how much I want!”  Either way, the stuff would be gone and I’d be happy.
But the thing to remember is that everything you keep in your house or garage has a story, and everything has a hook that latches on and drags you down.  Some things, like your favorite motorcycle, have big hooks in deep while others, like the spare part for a tool you no longer own, have small ones that are easily dislodged.  When you pick up  a thing and consider it, and can’t remember where you got it and why you kept it, that’s a sign that you kept it too long, or never needed it in the first place, and an invitation to send it on down the road.  The beauty of Ebay and Craigslist and all their competitors is that they give people ways to get rid of stuff the best way, by turning them into cash.  The problem is when you can’t quite figure out how to do that. 
It is also true that, even if you give stuff away or send a load to the scrap metal yard, it feels almost as good as if you had sold it, because the hooks pulling out of your shoulders lighten your load an infinitesimal but noticeable amount.  Giving something to a friend who needs it returns double the pleasure to you as you do good and feel good about it.  That’s better than money.
We are marked by the things we collect as we become known by them.  Just let one Singing Bass show up on your wall, and the avalanche of beer bongs, fishing plaquards, NASCAR posters and cutesy country sayings on softwood is inevitable.  It’s like clickbait on Facebook.
And then there’s the problem of what happens to your collection after you die.  That old saw about “I want to live long enough to become a problem for my kids” takes its meaning posthumously.  The real difference, I suspect, is that one departed person’s pile is dealt with by use of an auctioneer, while another one requires a dumpster.  It could be considered a measure of success in your accumulation, an affirmation, if you will, of your judgement and discriminating taste if the auction catalog is larger than the dump load.
So the wisdom nuggeted here, if any, is that collections are nice, when they bring you pleasure and increase in value (hah!), but it is also nice to thin them from time to time.  There was a guy, who made a good living hauling garbage in Portland for many years and accumulated a collection of motorcycles, mostly Harleys, that he rode for around 500 miles each before stashing them in his collection in original unmolested condition.  As you can imagine, the auction when he died drew a lot of attention and brought many high prices for the bikes when they sold.  You could also imagine the costs associated with storage of that many bikes in a way to preserve them, and how that alone would force the heirs to dispose of the collection, let alone the buildings that housed them.  You can imagine what will happen to Jay Leno’s Garage when he passes on.
There’s a collection of cars down in Punta Gorda, Florida, on display in a museum euphemistically called the Muscle Car Museum, even though it’s mostly GM cars, few Fords or Mopars.  It’s one man’s collection that outlived him by becoming large enough to draw a crowd in its own right, like the LeMay Collection in South Tacoma.

But it’s probably safe to say that most of our collections are not going to wind up in a museum.  It’s also probably safe to say that most of our collections are too large, and could stand to be thinned a bit.  I tell my kids that, if they’re lucky, I’ll get the dump run done in advance.  The rest is up to them.  He who dies with the most toys wins, right?

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