(Yankee) Hoarding - Part Four - "Kept"

(Yankee) Hoarding

Part Four

"Kept"

            There are problems with hoarding... that have nothing to do with hoarding.

            Those are the biggest problems with hoarding; the ‘have nothing to do with hoarding’

            Problems.

            Yes... you know them.  You’ve even seen them on television

            Too.

            A spectacle.  Blubbering, screeching refusal to give up a life’s “collection” of canary cages, each “from the trash” (found on the roadside trash), never cleaned but stored as methodically-meticulously “KEPT”.  “KEPT” is a noun; a qualifier of hoard.  But... each canary cage becomes a shudder down the spine of scripted hoard horror.  “WHY THAT COULD BE YOU DEAR... and all that STUFF you...”

            “Dear?”

            Stuff you

            Hold dear.  You hold on to the edges of yourself on earth with your “dear” hold on hoard.

            “Dear”.  “I have known you have this problem for a long time.  You hoard

            Dear”.

            First there is ‘collection’ and ‘collecting’.  Most never do that well.  ‘Collecting’ breaks for ‘accumulation’ right along.  It is a combination of finance, object supply, object quality and

            Human expression of suppressed human energy...; the ‘grab and go’ mantra, that skids the collect to accumulate to

            The discovery by self that one is out past the boarders of hoard; the landscape changed and one did not notice?

            Or care?

            The meaning of hoard is ...hoard is... meaningful.  My “kept” is a noun.

            Most who are out there on the borders do not know it.  The shoe ‘collections’ (Part Two) are rampant.  And real.

            Never edited.  Never purged.  “Kept”.  That simple.  “There’s some more (hoard) over there.”  The seed packets from the last fifteen years of ‘my gardens’.  “LOOKED THROUGH THEM” you speak out as “DOING”.  They now resemble five or six cubic feet of “clutter” in a “the garden shed”.  “Why do they put so many seeds in so many packets I do not understand that”.

            “TO SELL THEM TO YOU

            YOU IDIOT.”

            And that works out very well for them.

            “Some of the seeds are probably still good”.

            Probably they are.

            The qualifier again is ‘KEPT’; a noun.

            What happens next?

            SIXTEEN YEARS of ‘kept’ seed packets.

            Meanwhile the old MAN over there has promised to “CLEAN OFF” the “TOP OF MY TOOL BENCH” for sixteen years

            Too.

            “Idiot”.  That is the way the tool bench IS.  It is hoard.  He made it; a ‘his hoard’.  It will die there when he dies.  I will clean it off.  Half completed anything and everything.  His ‘kept’ is my ‘clean off’.

            What do I care that your not around to

            Poke it.

            Don’t you just LOVE to poke a dead man’s hoard.  You walked by the dead man’s tool bench for forty years and ONLY TODAY when MY HAND reaches out do you say “I AM SURE THAT...”.

            No.  You cannot have it any more; his tool bench hoard.  Go back home and

            Sulk

            Astride your own penny anti basement tool bench.  FINALLY GONNA FIX THAT LIGHT ‘above it’ you say?  “FINALLY” you say?  You are a problem of hoard. 

            YOU SUCK AT IT.

            False starts and stalls.  Most collecting turns to accumulation and this... rots... into hoard.  Yes:  Twenty years.  No... Forty... SEVEN years... and that’s the “I GOT TO SHOW FOR IT”.  Shoes.  Seeds.  Tool bench.  Scrap wood saved.  Books.

            “OH GOD DAMN YOU AND YOUR BOOKS”

            “SOME OF THEM... are very good (“RARE”) books.  I AM SURE”.

            “Should you find one of them in your HOARD... sir... tear the title page out and

            SAVE IT FOR ME”.

            “Oh no... you must be joking.”

            No... just observing the JOKE IS ON YOU.  Making your wife carry your old books down flights of stairs.  She survives you and you GIFT HER your HOARD you told me was your “RARE”  “BOOK” “COLLECTION”.  Her old ankles are going to give out SIX STEPS UP FROM the bottom of the LAST FLIGHT of STAIRS down and out of...

            The..

            “No, no, no:  I understand concisely that it was, as you say... your

            “COLLECTION”.

            HALF of the ‘silverware’ in the ‘silverware drawer’ WAS NEVER USED and was

            HOARDED by you in that drawer and

            NONE OF IT WAS... even... SILVER (“Sterling 9.25 pure silver”).  You hoarded silverware and never had any silver... too?

;            You hoarded THAT?

            As I said... hoarding... YOU SUCK AT IT.

            You are a problem of hoard.

            And you are very clear that you.... YOU

            “DO NOT HOARD”.

            Of course your right:  The old stone walls made of your family’s preference for hoarding old granite field stone back before the Revolutionary War... was, you are clear... someone else’s doing and ‘I didn’t know that was hoarding until you (I) pointed it out”.

            This is exhausting.

            This hoard; hoarder hoarding...:  Is it; the gum stuck under the school desk seat...

            Hoard too?  Your miserable.

            You do not hoard... and you are quick to point out a hoard and its hoarder... when you ‘see one’.  You are the problem of hoard.  You do not hoard.  And you know what hoard is.

            Yet you hoard... and do not know what hoard is.

            Very primitive, your behavior with ‘stuff’.  Your ‘stuff management’ is poor.  At best.  Your knowing eye?

            “What’s that?”

            One old woman’s silver drawer ...is filled with silver she found and hoarded.  It is her ‘kept’.  Her drawer is full of old silver.  The drawer is closed.  You cannot see it.  You don’t look in your own silverware drawer very much so... why should you look in hers?  “Her DRESS is a little OLD” you say.  SHE HAS... as ‘kept’... EVERY English nineteenth century transferware platter she has ever been able to purloin... some perfect... some smashed to smithereens.  “Oh” you say and admit that you’d “SEEN THEM” hanging on her “WALLS”.  Well... let me say that all you saw was SOME of them; SOME of her old... platter hoard.

            Rockingham.  English Rockingham.  She did that too; ‘Kept’.   Shelves of it.  Soap dishes, toddy pitchers.  Tobacco jars.  Chamber pots (“piss pots”).  Her ‘kept’ (hoard) of that was a rather ‘dirty CLUTTER’ on the shelves of her old cupboards.  Some of them; her ‘kept’ cupboards... had ‘blind doors’ she kept closed to keep her ‘kept’ from prying eyes.  Yes:  She ‘found you out a long time ago.  You are her enemy.  Of hoard.

            When I would talk to her... that was before she DIED, of course... we would say... in confidence... how ‘little’ you know.  That is what we would say.  And how little you have (‘hoard’) (‘kept’).  And how BAD that little you ‘kept’ IS.  And how you don’t know.  And don’t know... very much about hoard.  Accumulation.  Collecting.  “And stuff”.  How little you know and

            HOW MUCH YOU SAY

            About this ‘how little you know’.

            She never got along quite as far as I have in this ‘of hoard’.  I have an amplified obsession with eighteenth century English earthenware ceramics.  I mean... I am just NUTS about the stuff.  It’s very rare and all that of course but, too... it takes a person a while to get there.  You have to hoard so much.  “Kept” so much.  And then throw it out.  Too.  I already told you:  Hoard is about throwing out too.  I know it is hard... for you...

            To throw hoard out (“Yankee Hoard good sense” Part Two)

            When you have no hoard... at all.

Old New England Glassware in the Home - Part Thirty - "Wild Card"

Old New England Glassware in the Home

Part Thirty

"Wild Card"

            Difficult... to garner...

            Appreciation for

            Is my return

            To the ‘follow along’ survey of the decadence and decline of

            Old New England glassware... in the home

?

            Re-marking... the notation... that I have now comprehensively established the habitat of the glassware within the ...old New England home with its (the home’s)

            Now comprehensively expostulated upon decadence and decline

            Through the impacts of Industrialization, the economic expansion of the middle class AND...

            The rhapsody upon these two of... ‘material opulence’ merged with

Material abundance...:

“OH WHAT A SHIT PILE!”

Came the old New England home...

            And its glassware

            To be

            ?

            I ‘learned’ as a young antiques picker (age sixteen) that ‘that kind’ of glassware (‘late’ “VICTORIAN” EAPG) (glassware of the decadent decline) was ‘no good’ and

            “NOT REALLY”

            “old New England glassware” at all IF

            “YOU ....  KNOW” (early New England EAPG).

            “Ok.”

            And that was this “Ok” because “you can’t sell it”.

            “But Sir... I did (do)”.  (‘sell it’)

            “Oh.”

            So there was a problem...

            “With that”.

            Not that anyone cared.  Or noticed.  Or... remarked  (‘re-marked’) so...

            THAT WAS (in fact therefore) a HOLE in the “THAT WALL” (‘can’t sell it’).  And it was really very lowbrow in scope.  I didn’t... when working as a picker... with other pickers... and couldn’t (“could not”) “LEAVE ANYTHING BEHIND” including... any... thing... “I COULD SELL (that) ANYONE (would) BUY?”.  Yes... pretty simple and NEXT came...

            After ‘getting’ (buying very, very, very cheap) SELLING IT TO WHO?  You say.  I don’t really remember.

            Or do I?

            I do.

            She was always home; in her house on the main route next the house that had all the hubcaps for sale in their front yard:  The shiny clean hubcaps always for sale.  And she was

            Up from the little roadside garage that had the spotless 1963 Rambler American ‘kept in it’.  On sunny days the garage door was open.  Cloudy... rain... and/or snow:  The door was closed.  She

            Didn’t ever mention either; the hubcaps or the Rambler.  We would pull in and go to the front door and she would crack that open and, smiling, “I know you”.  My pal... I just call him that... already knew the secret and learned me it too:

            “She collects Egg in Sand”.

            “Egg in Sand” is an eighteen–eighties (1880’s) ‘later’ ‘Victorian’ EAPG ‘pattern’ of ‘pressed glass’ that looks like little Easter eggs tilted one way on one row with the next row having the eggs tilted the opposite way... set in a pin prick deckled background (“SAND”) over the whole ‘pattern area’ of a ‘piece of (early American) pressed glass’ in that pattern.  Pitchers.  ‘Sweetmeat’ dish (‘relish tray’)... goblets... made up the “WATER” or “Lemonade” “SET”.  I’ve, after hunting “IT” (‘egg in sand’) for forty-five years... “AH...” “Never found a sugar (bowl) or a... ‘like that’... salt shaker.  YET.”

            Who cares:  No one cares.  But anyway:

            SHE COLLECTED

            “EGG in SAND”

            And that’s what we did ‘there’; sell her the ‘egg in sand’ we “FOUND”.  The problem there was the “FOUND”.

            It was not

            AROUND

            To be

            FOUND.

            “So, like”:  I maybe went there, like, six times in two decades before she got

            “Looney”

            And they moved her “OUT”.

            Specifically what ‘was’ was that my pal and I... and then just ‘I’... would

            “CAME BY”

            And get the six bucks for the “WHATEVER GOBLETS... and/or ‘relish trays’ and, like, LEAVE... always with I dutifully noting to myself that ‘there is nothing in there’ meaning she ‘had’ or ‘collected’ NO ‘antiques’ that I ‘considered good’.  “SHE HAD” “JUST” “Victorian” “IN HER HOUSE”.  I didn’t have a problem with this.  Also... since “LIKE” she went to every “YARD SALE and such in the area... there was always a chance “MAYBE” (she’d found something [“a good antique”]).  This never happened but:  She was nice... in a limited art background way... and ‘likes antiques’ in a ...limited art background way.  OK?  I’m just telling you the truth; she didn’t have Chippendale ‘in there’ and didn’t know ‘one could’.

            So we’d goof on her behind her ...rather large butt... about her passion for

            “EGG in SAND”.  And LOOK:

            I was in High School.  OK?

            Well... “OK”:

            It created a “PROBLEM” for my art eye that I

            Have never been able to ‘shake’.  The problem was that I (eye) came to be the “SPOT” “EGG in SAND” “PATTERN” from... like... FIFTY FEET... on a table at a ‘holiday’ church sale and EVERYWHERE else in the ENTIRE UNIVERSE.  And so:

            I came to ‘know’

            “EAPG Victorian Pattern Glass”; what ‘it’ ‘looks like’ meaning that I ‘got too’ (“FOUND”) a lot of “TOO BAD THAT’S NOT EGG in SAND” ‘old New England “VICTORIAN” glassware

            Too.

            I... came to be a... “I didn’t leave that behind” of this ‘design form’ of “EAPG”.  This carried ‘into’ the ‘homes’ and the ‘cupboard bottoms’ and ‘the attics’ and... therefore, the whole natural habitat... of old New England glassware...

            As I went along... “being a dealer” (picker).

            I wouldn’t call it ‘smitten’ but

            I was

            Smitten.

            By it; old New England VICTORIAN glassware in the home.

            And have always been since

            Therefore.

            I, now, “LIKE” egg in sand.  I like

            “FINDING” (“a piece”) of

            Egg in Sand.

            AND ANY... old New England “Victorian” ‘pressed pattern’ glassware and

            I promise you

            Nobody cares... at all.

            Almost sort of.  NOW of any day by happenstance I do get a “those ARE nice” utterance from a ‘stumbled across’ someone “LOOKING AT” a “GLASSWARE” “Like I WANT TO GET SOME OLD GOBLETS”.  Don’t worry; Egg and Sand is still a “Too advanced for them” pattern.  I get, at best, a ‘Huh.”.  Should I choose to show ‘it’ off.

            Cool huh?

            As a Victorian EAPG pattern...

            It really is; way out there with the eggs in the sands.

            Want to go really ‘wild card’ on... old New England VICTORIAN glassware

            In the Home?  Come on:  TRY IT.

            Everyone understands now (2015) that there was a ‘bottle digging fad’ or ‘hobby’ in the 1960’s that continues to this day among a much more tech savvy professional “DIGGERS” set of ‘OLD BOTTLE DIGGERS’.  But back at the get-go the game was played by following the ‘old stone wall’ ‘out behind’ the back door of an ‘old house’ and ‘sure enough one is going to find that old house’s ‘throw out’; its “DUMP”.  And ‘dig that’ “DUMP” and “COLLECT” all the “OLD BOTTLES”.

            And it came to be that almost every ‘old dump’ in New England has been ‘dug’ and its (whole) old bottles ‘collected’.  So there; a done deal.

            Well not so fast for every ‘old-old’ bottle digger’ STILL stops dead while ‘walking’ the stone wall when they “just take a look out there’ along the wall and ‘hit’ the dump.  And they “it’s been dug” ...pokes it... and even fidgets a few broken pieces and

            STOP RIGHT THERE... students of EAPG; old New England glassware ONCE in the home but now, too (two), found.. BROKEN... “in the dump” “to that place” (HOME).  OK so when I’m standing there after poking and ‘collecting’ the PIECES of an ‘old New England glassware’ that is broken and been ‘pitched out’... I stand there

            And, with the pieces in my hand... sort of fitted together

            Sort of, I

            STAND THERE LOOKING BACK FROM THE WALL at the HOME and

            I say to myself that ‘them people in there; that home, used this here pieced together “YEAH” ‘Good Luck’ or ‘Horseshoe’ pattern EAPG glassware (goblets) in that house in 1876 and I know that from these pieces in my hand “SEE?”.  I touch this base and head for home.  “NEAT” and when I’m home I ...have been known to... ‘tape’ the ‘pieces’ together with duck tape... “just for the Hell”... of it. 

            Now... to my fixated ‘eye’ (‘I’)... doing the ‘this’ is even a ‘can be’ better than rummaging the cupboard bottoms in the home’s dining room.  I mean... I am outside up pasture from the home on the stonewall ‘at the corner’ ‘at the dump’ looking back down past the Red-Wing Blackbirds flitting about and the little breeze, not too hot, in the shade by the old sunny pasture so

            The pieces to the old New England glassware goblet... in the dump from this HOME... is, like...

            I’ll call it ‘special’; a ‘special’ way to “appreciate” old New England glassware... in the home.  OH YOU CAN ‘collect it’ (EAPG) this way TOO.  Like I said; it is a

‘Wild card’.

The New England Epic

The New England Epic

The postcard took a month to get here (Maine)

From Peru.

After reading it carefully I decided that was something

I would never do;

Go to

Peru.

I...

Do not have the intellectual curiosity I’m supposed to

Suppose

I need or want

To go out past my woodpiles

Anymore.

Or is it the old stonewalls?

These... historic structures

Mingle with the fallen leaves,

Cracked branches and the

View from there of the pond.

A duck quacking.

The cloud covers the sun

Moving air animates the dry leaves.

The

Moment I step inside the

Hot fireplace fire’s heat is

Making a whole home

Warm and toasty forbidding

The notion that ‘two more weeks

In the jungle’ after

‘Five weeks in the mountains’

So I take my boots off

Put another log on

And wander in the very lost

I am here;

Living here

With the ‘very simplest’ that I suppose I

Could find anywhere;

Even in Peru

But would never go there.

I just wanted my spirit self

To get up off it’s ass and

Have to ask around if anyone is

Foolish enough to disturb (destroy?)

A perfectly good sense of the

Whole God damn universe by

Going to Peru.

It’s not gonna happen.

Not with the fresh bite of ice cold air,

The rake of that wind ripping my

Ribcage with...

No... the scarf stops it.  Yes:

There on my chest... the scarf stops it.

That is not what happens in Peru.

No and just as countless as the dead leaves

Blowing by my eyes to show me that it

Is impossible to not be... too... blown;

As a leaf

Living here with the very simplest.