‘The Collecting of Stuff and Snippets of Past Memories’

Jack Oates

31 August 2019

‘The Collecting of Stuff and Snippets of Past Memories’

My house is full of stuff, collected over six decades and counting. It’s mostly my stuff. My wife isn’t much of a collector. She says she enjoys watching me collect stuff, mostly books, but I don’t I believe her. I think she is being kind.

I have thousands of books. I enter thrift stores and junk shops and leave with a heavy boxes overflowing with must-have volumes, waiting to fill and gather dust on another shelf in my house. I’m in the habit of buying wood once a week to build more shelves.

In the basement, dozens of plastic milk crates, filled with vinyl record albums, sit along the wall. I started my vast collection of vinyl albums when I turned twelve or thirteen. That’s when I discovered the pleasure of earning my own money: delivering newspapers door-to-door and odd jobs around town. I did all right. It was enough to buy comic books, paperbacks, and records.

My favorite record store, a rundown building on Main Street, had in one place, all I wanted. The records were a few cents cheaper than the record store at the mall. The mall was a two-mile walk through slush and snow. I lived close to downtown, so there was no contest which record store I was going to buy records. A long-haired, twenty-something hippy, who owned and managed the record store, knew everything about music, and, what impressed me, he knew a lot about everything else, too. I’d stand at the counter for an hour listening to him talk about politics, baseball, hockey, books, and music. He seemed well informed. What did I know? I was just a kid.

There were several wire spin racks of comic books and paperbacks. They sat in a long line down the center of the floor. I’d spin the racks trying to make the hard choice of what comic books and paperbacks I could buy with the small amount of money in my pocket. Batman and Spider-man were the top two choices. If I had extra money, The Flash and The Green Lantern, came home with me.

The plywood record bins leaned against the sidewall. They occupied the space from the front of the store to the back wall of the building. Teenagers stood in a row, smelling of cigarette smoke, flipping through the record stacks, searching for the latest bootleg albums. I’d squeeze myself between the tall kids, hoping to get my fingertips on an untouched stack of records. Sometimes I’d hear a teenager blurt out ‘All right!’, and then watch him stick an album under his armpit, happy with his sudden luck. Finding that elusive bootleg album was like winning the lottery. For me, it was one-stop-shopping. I have everything I bought from that place of magic and wonder, on Main Street. The records, the paperbacks, and the comic books, sold to me by a Vietnam draft dodger. I remember the record store with fondness and, after six decades, I miss the record store and the tall, lanky, and long-haired draft dodger, who brought with him a little magic to my small town.

The years travel by and then CD's and DVDs become all the rage. I once had hundreds of CD's and DVDs piled in corners and piled on any available flat surface. I donated them all to the Salvation Army Thrift Store. Who needs CD's and DVDs when we have Netflix, Apple, and other streaming sites? What the thrift store did with them, I have no idea. They probably unloaded them into a dumpster. My wife’s happy the CD's and DVDs are gone. She’s waiting patiently for the books to disappear. Is that going to happen? No.

Our youngest son, a schoolteacher, vacated the house and moved in with his girlfriend. He left most of his stuff behind. His old room, a cluttered mess of countless video games, broken consoles and TV sets, and, clothing hanging in the closet that will never see the light of day ever again, let alone worn, remained behind. He says he’ll come back for his stuff. I don’t believe him. He has a new uncluttered house. I’m convinced we’re stuck with his stuff. I’ve decided to clean out his old room and dump everything in the garage. I’m going use his old room as my new office. Anyway, more wall space for books. I haven’t told my wife yet. I’ll hold off telling her, I think.

I have four grandchildren. When they were toddlers, their parents would bring them to the house, and they’d empty the bottom bookshelves onto the floor, sit there, and flip through the pages. I allowed them to do it, hoping they would discover a love for books. They’re teenagers now and they all read books accept when they’re on their cell phones, which is most of the time. Oh well, a partial victory.

My youngest granddaughter said to her parents, ‘Nana and Papa say strange and weird things.’ Then she asked, ‘What is a telephone? Why does a telephone hang on a kitchen wall?’, while she thumbed a text message on her iPhone. I feel ancient.

Once, on a Sunday afternoon, I took down my family photo albums. The pictures in the photo albums go back through the centuries to the beginning of photography. I wanted my grandchildren to see their ancestors. Tintype images of their grim faced ancestors wearing their Sunday best. Impressions, one would think by looking at them, of an event so torturous, none would live through it. I thought that they’d enjoy seeing the images of their ancestors. I was wrong. The experience lasted less than five minutes. They pushed away from the table and walked into another room, laughing at something funny playing on their i Phones. Well, I thought, maybe someday, they’ll want to know about their ancestors. Maybe?

I live in a rich western nation with all of its ups and all of its downs. Like so many others in this country, my ancestors helped to build this nation. I have a house full of stuff that I bought and paid for, through my own hard work. I married a lovely woman, who, for some unknown reason, thought I was a good marriage prospect. My wife is a saint!

I’m not going to apologize, in any way, for living in a rich western nation. And neither should you.

© 2019 Jack Oates