“Digging Through Memories” by Richard F. Yates

We have lived in this current house for about three years. Mariah says four, and she’s much better at time than I am---so it’s probably four years. Regardless of how long it’s been since we GOT here, we haven’t ever bothered to unpack and organize the garage. Before this house, we stayed with my brother for a while, and we had a bunch of our stuff in storage, and before that we had a house that had been in the family since 1987---but was falling to pieces. (It needed a new roof, the electrical was dangerous---the breaker box would frequently shoot out sparks and fuse breakers together, the plumbing was from the 1930s and several of the pipes were starting to crack, the chimney was falling off the side of the house---like there was a three inch gap between the chimney and the roof after one nasty wind-storm---and it seemed to be getting worse each year…) However, we didn’t have the money to pay anyone to fix everything, nor did we know how to do it ourselves. When the insurance company said the house was no longer insurable, we walked…

So now we’re renters, and we have this MASSIVE number of boxes and plastic tubs and other miscellaneous containers full of three decades worth of memories just CLOGGING our garage up to the rafters---and it was time to start sorting it.

We made one pile of stuff that we knew belonged to our older daughter, who recently purchased her own house, and we loaded that stuff into our Escape and took it to her house so that it could continue to hibernate in HER overstuffed garage. (Does everyone have one of these, or is it just our family?) We made a pile of stuff for our younger daughter, too, but she still lives here, so we just pushed her pile into one specific area. We dug out the Halloween and Christmas decorations (we LOVE decorating for holidays, so we have a LOT of boxes of that stuff) and put that stuff all into one area, as well. We got all the DJ gear smashed into one space---except for the CDs, which are currently taking up a LOT of space (like about 16 milk-crates worth of space...)

After sorting and separating, we made a few hard decisions and actually THREW A BUNCH OF STUFF AWAY---which was difficult. I’m a near-hoarder, always wondering if THIS or THAT might still be useful someday---but I tried to overcome the neurotic urge to hang on to everything, and I tried to say to myself, “If I haven’t used it in AT LEAST three years---possibly as many at ten or more (we had boxes of stuff even at the OLD-OLD house), then by the gods, we didn’t NEED it.

Into the trash bin!

BUT!!!! In all of our digging, we also found a bunch of wonderful, old artwork and photos and hand written stories and other creative works that we were VERY happy to rediscover. Some of our favorite finds were old photos---and most of those we shared on FACEBOOT (where a lot of our extended family has a presence. It might be the only positive thing I can say about Faceboot: I know what my cousins and friends from high school are doing now, even if they live several states away.)

But what I was excited by was the great old artwork that the kids made. (We need to get some of these things framed!) I’m the type of guy who loves “naïve” and“primitive” and “amateur” art, so KIDS' art is some of my favorite work. Here are a bunch of these bits. (There are a ton more that I haven’t photographed yet.) Most of these pieces were drawn by one of my two daughters.

Here’s one that I find particularly amusing. My younger daughter wrote her own GOTH book, when she was maybe 6 or 7 years old.

The main element of “The Book of Evil” is lightning. She says, in big spooky letters on page 4 or 5, “Lightning has squiggles if you touch it!” Evil.

Another fun thing we used to do a lot when the kids were young was paint on paper plates. At the time, we were pretty big into watercolors, and when you put watercolor on a porous surface like a non-coated paper plate, you get this great blending/blurring effect. (I like it anyway.)

My wife, who found a box of stuff that she’d kept from before we even met (over 26 years ago), discovered a bunch of treasures, like a Marilyn Monroe doll (tattered and abused, but obviously well loved), her old Holly Hobbie metal lunchbox, and some Garbage Pail Kids stickers. Many of the stickers were water damaged and destroyed but a few of them looked pretty good. There was even a BIG one, like 5x8 inches or so, which I'd never seen before! I got a photo of it, with a regular sized card underneath it for size contrast!

And last, for this batch of memories and old creative works, we come to this photo, from about 1993, most likely taken by my then girlfriend (now wife) Mariah. It’s ME with pink hair and fancy shades---being skinny and looking cool! (Was I ever those things???) I was a skater punk back then, and this would have been within a few months of our first daughter being born. Notice, I even still have a skateboard, which was my primary mode of transportation---until I had to carry a car-seat and diaper bag and a BABY everywhere, so I started driving more often. (The car-seat was just a bit too heavy, and Mariah got nervous if I tried to do too many tricks while carrying a baby…) (Not to mention---I was a lousy skateboarder! I spent way more time picking myself up off the ground than flying through the air.)

If you look at me now---all old and broken and grey haired---you MIGHT still be able to see some of that adventurous, hip punk, maybe around the eyes, but my skateboarding days are definitely behind me. (Although the board is still hanging on the wall in the garage.) But it’s nice to have a bit of PROOF that I used to be exciting and energetic! Ha! Now, being a grandpa, I get to tell really bad jokes and not feel as bad about not remembering things---so I think it’s a fair trade.

The garage isn’t COMPLETELY sorted yet, but we’ve made a lot of progress. We’re hoping to make enough room to be able to turn it into a DISCO, eventually. Put up some lights, get the records out of the milk-crates and onto some kind of shelves (we’re thinking the classic cinder blocks and 2x4s might be the way to go---although I’ve got a LOT of records and CDs to shelve, so it’s going to take a TON of cinder blocks and planks to construct), and finally we'll get to enjoy the space, once the clutter has been organized. That’s the plan anyway. Who knows…we might even FINISH it (sometime in the next two or three years… I think we’ve got time…)

---Richard F. Yates
(Primitive Thoughtician and Holy Fool)

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