JUL-A-3

THE FOURTH OF JULY,

WHICH CLOSELY RESEMBLED, FOR ME,

THE THIRD AND FIFTH OF JULY:

THE PACKING UP OF DERWOOD PROCEEDS STEADILY

WITH WEARY NOSTALGIA

July 4--6, 2003

The fireworks have thundered, as did the rain the previous night, and as did the tree chopper and shredder that hauled away the big tree that fell from my property onto Ed Luber’s lawn. Now the controversy with lots of advisors kibitzing is what must be done by a bunch of amateur tree surgeons to the remaining half of the bifid tree that has now lost one half of its slingshot contour—the part overhanging my neighbor.

The closets in both master bedroom and the northwest, now vacated, bedroom are now empty. That bedroom will be destroyed, as will all the closets between them, and its pace will be the much-enlarged master bathroom and whirlpool tub, separate from a shower and twin vanities. The remainder of the space of what was Laura’s bedroom long ago (I found college notes of her French class in the drawers that had never been emptied out) will be a walk-in closet. The plans were sketched out by Dale after the moving of the master bedroom to the principle guest room was rejected since it would give us no room for any space to use for storage indoors for anything to be salvaged and kept with us while the house is nearly totally re-done as a modernized home of this century. I now have both the southern bedrooms stuffed with labeled boxes ready to be sealed up as I now take down the guest double queen sized bed, which I have still standing to use as a platform for taping shut and labeling boxes as I stuff them away into the tightest pack I can make of them.

This is a very big and dreary project, with very major accumulations of things that I had carefully filed away so well as to have forgotten. For one thing, I discovered a load of pre-paid film developers, which I had bough in large quantity before several dealers went out of business, but neither Kodak nor York did, so I presume that the mailers are still good for the film I will continue to be developing.

I have made very big investments in several areas---one is the photographic equipment, for which I now have many cameras and the accessories thereto. Last night I sorted and stored just the ammunition for several shotguns, of different gauges, and half dozen rifles of different calibers and different loads for different game. The now organized collection now fills one very heavy shelf in what had been the sewing room To get the project completed at the rate that I am going on it, I know I will not be able to do much sorting and vacating of the basement or attic. So, I am concentrating on the main and second floor. In order to change pace and also to hear the NPR concerts from the Mall, I started working on the kitchen, packing away boxes of the infrequently used items and clearing everything from the kid’s pictures under refrigerator magnets, to pulling the wall fixture south. It still bugs me that rather good-looking light white oak cabinetry is being stripped out and dumped, when any replacement would undoubtedly be made of some laminated veneer. I hope all of the castoffs go to some reasonable salvage and not just into a dumpster. But, I will not be here to see that anything is saved, and that may be just as well, since it needs doing and I may still have attachments to such items as the “waste basket” Michael had made for me some very many Father’s Days ago, by pasting colored patches on an ice cream carton. But, that memento and many others are simply being tossed now, while I am still around to acknowledge these changes.

THE FIFTH OF JULY:

SWELTERING IN THE MASTER BEDROOOM, SPENDING A FULL DAY

JUST TRYING TO CLEAR THE FLOOR OF THE STACKS

OF INCOMPLETELY READ, OR HALF WRITTEN ARTICLES

I am completely exhausted. After a full day picking up, sorting out, and carrying over the large stacks of books accumulated for the last thirty years, to pile them in another higher stack for storage for a year or more. It took me over two hours just to clear out the four bushels of records of the thirty “frequent flyer” programs to which I belong, saving only the most recent notice of whatever balance of miles I have on each. I then started going through the stacks of unfinished manuscripts and the piles of books to sort them and re-stack them in the guest bedroom from which I had just taken down the bed and propped its mattresses up against the wall, I have to make the book stacks stable enough to make a stable base for still more stuff to get piled to the roof. The full day did not yet address the 48 file cases and their extra stacks of paper and prepared slide talks, nor did it yet get started on the fully saturated bookcases themselves with as many books again as I had just cleared from the floor. The books in the cases had at least been organized at one time before access to them had been blocked by the stacks in front of them. I will have to put in a fifth full time day straight in addressing each of these very major projects.

I cannot get down to micro-management of some of these projects—like putting the National Geographics into chronologic order as I had those that area already shelved in the attic—since I would never get even half finished with this very major thirty year-pack rat clean out. I have not thrown out as much as I might have with more time to discriminate—but I have filled the big blue recycling bins from Montgomery ‘County twelve times over. And I have done this in the hottest day of the year, in a sticky humidity with a “heat index” of 106* over the temperature of 98* F. I have been covered with curled dust rolls and have had to sneeze often. I worked as steadily as the heat and volume of work would allow, and skipped lunch, so as “Prairie Home Companion” came on, I took all my filthy soaking wet clothes and threw them into the washer as I took a shower, and fixed myself a steak from the stock of abundant food I still have loaded in the house which I will probably give away a good part of it, rather than repacking it for late use. Now, ironically, it is cooling down, as I have used my sit-down time to type up this note. Then I will start the whole sequence over again. It looks like another ten days of work, if I can judge from my “Swiss-cheesing” this process, taking on a small part of an overwhelmingly large project, until the hoes become confluent. It is lonely work, but it is also something only I can do, since anyone else would probably bulldoze all the memorabilia of my world-wide adventures in quite a remarkable lifetime, perhaps uniquely possible only at this era in history. I have salvaged a few things that I would think the kids might find of interest of their growing years. And, I have also crammed some items into boxes stuffed in corners saying I would only be able to get to the more refined sorting whenever it comes time to sort it back into the new designer interior. By that time, many of my historic items will look more like wreckage, and it may be easier to dispose of them, after once more holding this piece of what the anthropologists call “Material Culture” in my hands, that brings back every memory of where I was and the circumstances of my having collected it, even things said at the time, all of which is in the three to four decade past window. Some day I may have trouble remembering as clearly and distinctly what many of these items mean or represent, and that may also make it easier to fill the dumpster. Ironically, this is not nostalgia for a piece of furniture, all of which is going to be dumped (with the exception of the captains chairs from, my several alma maters) but pieces of paper, or a shell fragment from the beaches of Saipan, or the barbed wire “Achtung!” warning sign from the Berlin Wall, and scores of souvenirs of all around the world, including the floating rocks from Kamchatka or the obsidian from the volcano over Mono Lake in the Eastern Sierras along the John Muir Trail, and slate from the summit of “Mount Geelhoed” in the Brooks Range north of the Arctic Circle. I even have seven aquaria filled with match pads from nearly every nation on all continents on earth—if any museum needs to “top up” its global collections, I am ready to donate!

A BRIEF BREAK BEFORE RESUMING THE GRIND

I went to church—the only venture outside the house in four days, and even that was preceded by stops to drop off plastic, glass bottles, and trash, while the amount of paper trash has now been piled up to eight bins in the kitchen, to be put out for the Wednesday recycling pick up—I hope. I realize how much of my life has been recorded on paper.

I have encountered rather nice pieces of “material culture” in the course of digging down through the stratigraphic layers, such as notes form each of my parents and each of my kids. I have wonderful memorabilia of Michael’s growing up, such as Father’s Day homemade gifts to me. And I have journals and essays from all over the world. This was a unique experience in life and perhaps could only be achieved at this time, with jet travel, color photography, the “pax Americana” and medical skills to volunteer. It is heart-rending history, before becoming back-straining heavy lifting. I have more paper folders and attaché cases from world-wide meetings, and small souvenirs, like the rocks, sea shells, rifle casings (from my hunts and also form the bloody carnage of WW II—all of which has meaning to me, which recall even the conversations and colors, and smells of the time. But, there is also the “moth and rust decay” and, as yet (and, it is to be hoped, after the new expensive ADT security system is put in place after the remodeling,) no “thieves that break in and steal.” It has taken whole days to clear a desk, and to unstack the floor space.

At church, a couple appeared whom I had only met once and briefly. Ada and Abraham Winjveen came back to the DCCRC church where they were married in 1959 to re-new their marriage vows after a world-wandering career with the Foreign Service. They moved back to Holland, and with seven kids out of the house, he said that retirement and being underfoot of a very independent woman (who had been required to be that) and getting reacquainted was the hardest part. But, it was a touching gesture, and another example of my throwback to the fifties and sixties in my nostalgic archaeological digging in the layers of unfinished articles and superb essays which will never see the light of day. I should have had microchips at my disposal a few decades earlier, and the digital revolution would have made packing up much simpler!

Now, I return to catch up at work and will return to the really heavy lifting of the files and file cases, book cases and furniture, which must somehow get shrunken down and squeezed into the two rooms to be sealed. I am glad I will not be doing this more than once!

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