We're moving into another house. And as we give away, throw away or box up everything we've collected over the past 15 years, it occurs to me that if we hadn't bought so much junk we'd be paying cash for the next house.
It also amazes me that it was so easy to move when I was younger. Pack it up and go. No storage unit, no buy/sell closing-date tap dance. I could fit every important thing I owned into the truck and sleep down at the boat launch for a couple weeks if I had to.
These days, I have roomfuls of homage to those days and all the days since. Things I collected at work. Books I read. Photos I took. Newspapers I edited. Tools I used exactly once.
It's taking weeks to go through everything.
Oh, how I long for those old days of barely having a pot to hoard stuff in.
The only thing I remember from my first apartment -- a lovely flat that sat 0.00002 feet from a set of frequently traveled railroad tracks in Andalusia, Alabama -- was a stereo I'd had since I was 12. It played only Hank Williams Jr. cassette tapes and a late-night truckers' country station. I'd lie awake and listen and fantasize about moving back into my old room at home.
My next apartment was in Tallahassee, Florida, where I attended Florida State University, worked at the Tallahassee Democrat and lived off Blairstone Road with my roommate, Mike. (Yes, we were Mike and Ike. Hello, ladies.)
I still hadn't accumulated much, but there were a few holdings noteworthy enough that I actually remember them:
Two wood-and-wicker barstools. My big investment in the digs. A few years later my puppy Chipper would chew up one like it was Levi Garrett. Yesterday I put those same barstools into a storage unit.
One laminated paper parrot hat. I bought it from some guy in a parking lot a short time after a case of Miller Lite and a few minutes before a Jimmy Buffett concert. I haven't seen it in years but keep hoping it'll turn up.
Aunt Bee's Mayberry cookbook. A novelty gift that helped keep me from starving. Just last week I made Coca Cola pork chops that were to die for.
Tombstone movie poster. It was displayed on the wall above the television. In it, Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer, Sam Elliott and Bill Paxton walk side-by-side toward the O.K. Corral with a burning building in the background. It was the closest thing we had to fine art. Mike took it with him when we left the apartment.
And that's it. Nothing else comes to mind. Quality over quantity, no doubt.
Twenty-one-year-old me had some problems to work through. But when it came to minimalism, the kid was on to something.