Our neighborhood had a garage sale today, the first in its
history. It lasted three hours and was closed to the public. Most of the
neighbors skipped it too. No traffic. No customers.
No sales. It was a real bust.
On the other hand, it prompted Gretchen and me to get off our butts and make decisions about all the stuff we brought with us to Florida. Well, some of the stuff, anyway. We barely made a dent in this Herculean task. I still have the 1946 Lionel train my dad bought me when I was eleven months old, and all the post-war cardboard houses – “made in Japan” – that we bought to go with it. There is my Little League uniform with “Little Buddy Jones” imprinted on the back, the glove for a small hand, and a miniature bat. There’s my merit badge sash and a whole lot of other Boy Scout paraphernalia, including my Dad’s badge when he was a scout in the 1930s. I have cars, guns and planes that I played with as a child. I even have the toy chest I kept my things in – so small by today’s standards.
All my elementary school artwork, my 10th
grade biology notebooks, and many of the papers I wrote are well preserved. We have quilts by my grandmother and paintings
by my wife. We have a pie safe and antique chairs - my Dad’s handwork -
that we’ll never use again. Add to this the hundreds of letters,
newspaper clippings and magazines my mother treasured. Don’t forget the boxes
of Christmas ornaments, the family heirlooms, and all the photos Gretchen spent
hours organizing and digitalizing. Did I mention my father’s
coin and postcard collections? My own Easter egg collection? My elephant
collection? My icons? My CDs? My books?
Until our neighbors announced this sale, I couldn’t bear to
part with any of it. Then something snapped. Now I want it all to go
away! If I spent
the first 75 years of my life collecting this stuff, I'll be spending the next 75
finding it good homes.
But Florida is a terrible place to do this. At least 75% of the
people here are in the same boat. They don’t want to pick through the
flotsam and jetsam of someone else’s life. I have enough stuff for a small museum,
but no one really wants to visit it. These objects are sacred to me, but they lack meaning or significance to everyone else.
The Bible says that the sins of the fathers (and mothers)
are visited upon their children until the umpteenth generation. I’m going to do
my best to prevent the fulfillment of this curse, but what a daunting task it is.
(Photo by Andrew Evers, CNBC, Ocrober 1, 2017)
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