The inspiration or need to excavate some 80 years worth of one time essential acquisitions long since forgotten in their deep dark hiding places--under the basement stairs, the long forgotten coal bin, through the trapdoor to the spidery crawl space. You know what I mean. Out of sight, out of mind.
Why start? It’s just a never ending task with so many unknown challenges and memories to be confronted with. You set out to clean up the mess, sort out the savers, discard that which you cannot even remember where it came from, or was it even yours?
Because of a faint flicker of conscience fighting its way to the fore, guilt is the reward for the slacker so get on with it, you haven’t got all day or forever for that matter. The voice of conscience and virtue spurs you on to...let’s start at the top this time--it’s too dark and moldy in the nether regions.
Open the stairway door to the third floor, with trash can, broom, dust pan, and flash light it is an all out attack on the ancient history--stocked, stored, and discarded of 107 Bloomingbank Road. Watch out sleeping dreams of long ago, ghosts of growing and growing older, forbidden and forgotten memories. You’re about to be rousted out of your dusty but cozy shoe boxes, photo albums, school year books filled with pictures of people you can’t recall or one’s you yearned to know well or more intimately.
O M! There’s a picture of gorgeous Ian McCullum. I was in love with him before I even knew about same sex love, or was it lust? Anyway he asked me to be his partner in an Apache dance skit for the senior hight talent night. I couldn’t believe it. He’d been pleasant enough at school, but we weren’t pals. The truth will out. As his partner, I had to appear in black satin pajamas and flowing scarf topped off with a feathered turbin. You can guess where this was going....
After the show ended so did my infatuation primarily because Ian liked girls better than apprentice fags. So much for the 1943 year book.
Wonder if this box of 78 RPM’s would bring anything at collector’s row? Probably Value Village would turn them down. Oh well, let’s move on. Now, look at this all wrapped up in newspaper--the Chicago Tribune, June, 1941--the old and cherished Lionel steam locomotive, all that remains of your train board that you received on an earlier Christmas 1938 which was immediately commandeered by your older brother and dad. But it’s the thought that counts and you did get a tunnel and train station the next year.
Here’s a box of letters to the family when I was going to be an Air Corps hero. If naivete was a qualification for the Army Air Corp, I was overly qualified. After the Army’s foregone decision that washed out all of the cadet squadron, the men (all 18 year olds) moved on the many and varied military positions: guard duty, kitchen police, butt control, and, if you’re lucky, a corner in the squad room.
In the process of pursuing weekend passes and R&R the more important (depending on your point of view) aspects of emerging male on male associations had taken a particular precedence over sporting events and cultural pursuits; such as, the grand old hotel in Richmond that hosted a military gang bang in room 769. Talk about advanced education opportunities.
Look at this--an old post card post marked Chicago, Ill. from dear sweet Tom the warrant office that made my acquaintance on the bus returning to the Air Force Base from D.C. Just enough time to establish the fact that maybe he could find a place for me in his office. Gee, I wish I’d kept in touch after we got our Ruptured Ducks, but he was married anyway and I didn’t know about the subtleties of being BI.
More fodder for the trash bag of years gone by--some misspent, some not--one can only judge from the long view back. Housecleaning, as I told you, can be a never- ending chore that sometimes can only be concluded by one of two situations: the house burns down or you stop reading those letters and breathing.
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