oO ~ by Harriett Fjaagesund

eT S ome people seem destined to collect junk. The very first time ee MY. husband and I moved after we were married, we simply packed all _v, our. belongings, including the family cat, into the backseat and the trunk of our car, By the second move we'd collected a few. "odds and ends’; squeezing it all into the car was a little _ more difficult this time. The cat was beginning to look nervous." = 9°”

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. ..\ “Phe third move was a challenge. Every available inch of space, including the roof'of the -.... ear, was packed solid. The cat, which by now had developed a severe personality disorder, “. gerambled to the top of the heap and hung on for dear life. This has continued on through _. the years, until_we have now worked our way up to where we. would: need a whole fleet of

* semi-trucks to haul everything away. re po, _. Collecting junk is easy. Getting rid of it is another matter. Like their rodent -. counterparts, human pack rats are born recyclers. That's the-good part. The bad part is that human pack rats squirrel everything away, guarding against that dreaded future emergency —_ when you or one of your friends will be in dire need of an item that can’t be found anywhere else, like a defective rocket booster or the hind end of a Sherman tank. You never know when

, . one of these emergency situations is going to sneak up on you. a, : .. ,. Each spring my husband and I go through the ritual of cleaning out the garage. This is - an entirely senseless procedure since we rarely accomplish much, other than moving things

. * around a bit. Last summer, in an act of desperation,.we held two garage sales. Fellow pack —

. Yats descended on us in mad droves. These people. were easy to spot by the glazed look in their eyes. Non-pack rat types quickly fled the scene,: obviously. preferring saner

... Surroundings where broken shovel handles, rusty pails, and ancient automobile parts didn’t fit into the picture, . oe . _. . Atypical "spring cleaning" jaunt usually follows along these lines: “Honey, do.you-want __. this old wooden chair?" I carefully study. this kitchen reject. The seat is badly warped, one ... leg is missing, and the back is nothing more than a distant memory. "Nah, trash it." So hubby throws it onto the garbage pile. Only now that we've officially declared it to be “/. garbage, we can’t quite get it out of our minds. Ignoring the offending object doesn’t do any .. good. We finally give up and agree that it’s still got three good legs that might come in handy for something or other. | . . .

The whole problem with collecting junk is that it can become an obsession. Even though _. ,we had a perfectly. good stainless steel milk. pail, we religiously collected ice cream buckets __ when we had a milk cow. This seemed like a good idea at the time; we were quite certain _ that we would one day be struck by a blinding urge to use one of these buckets for a milk . . pail, or that we might suddenly decide to store our fresh.cream and butter in them. So just ... to be sure we had enough for this potential emergency, we collected about a zillion of them. os.» When we went to the Queen Charlotte Islands last summer we immediately began - gollecting seashells and styrofoam fishing floats for souvenirs. But thinking that we might woes like to give a few of the nicer ones away as gifts, I suggested we collect.a few extra. So we . lugged six heavy. boxes of seashells, and mouldy fishing floats back home. |

Now another spring season has come around, and once again we are faced with the same

~~ old dilemma of cleaning out the garage., Maybe this year we should hold a garage sale and try selling the whole garage, lock, stock and barrel. That’s an offer no self-respecting pack rat could refuse! |

‘Terrace Review — Marck 27, 1992

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