It’s Shaping Up!

Oh, the sorry-ness of pile of plunder. It’s good…most of it…some of it. Years of piling on more and more finally reached the peak of endurance! I’m rather ashamed to show what it looked like, but here’s a mere sample.

All holiday weekend I labored, and this weekend too. One corner of the great 25 x 30 foot room cleared, swept (walls and floor) and mopped looked so wonderful and kept more striving for more, more, more! Down went the wadded webs, away went the dust and dirt, and that left the boxes. Boxes literally upon boxes full of history. I set them out and sorted.

I found my ancient Texas Instruments TI-30, the first calculator I ever had. Shows my age, I know. I found my high school graduation cap, gown and special tassels, all still sealed in the bag because I didn’t go to graduation. I tried a year of full scholarship college at the University of Louisville, then joined the United States Navy. I went in part because Dad had been a sailor in the Korean War, and in part because I wanted to GET AWAY! Gosh, this stuff was bringing back the memories. I even found my dress white uniform and box of medals.

I remembered how excited I was to win knitting machines on Ebay and was so sad they’d been neglected. The chore of moving the fifty fat spools of yarn made me wonder what had possessed me. Way in the back of the worst corner sat my Pentax K-1000 FILM camera, the one I bought all eager to catch my ship and head out on a Western Pacific (WestPac) cruise. I sure put that poor camera to work, and learned how to develop black and white film on Diego Garcia. That’s a coral atoll just big enough for a C-130 landing strip. I got a story from there, all right, but that’s for another time. This camera became crusty with salt from being at sea for months so I took it apart and applied graphite. The darling never failed me, it simply became obsolete. Picture tears.

I did not stop until the entire floor, wall and windows was clean. I had to scoop approximately one ton of mummified ladybugs, wasps and other dead insects from the sills, yuck. Opening the windows for the first time in years sure felt good.