The Treasures Lost And Left Behind

M

munk

Joined
Mar 22, 2002
Messages
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My Dad gave me his broken McIntosh tube amp around 1985, and several years later I gave it to a Psych Tech I worked with. He liked to tinker and I thought he might enjoy it. There's a good chance though, that like myself, he never got around to it and chucked it. Today the Japanese are paying top dollar for those amps, broken or not. Imagine a 75 watt amp selling for 2000 dollars. Yeah, that's right, in the 60's not many of us had more than 75 or 100 watts. Can you imagine that today?

I don't know what it is about valuable stuff that hurts a little. Stuff is stuff. Maybe we attach importance to some things as a kind of projection, symbolizing the other things that hurt or touch us deeply, like love or loss or death. I dunno. I do know I had many first edition Charles Bukowski hardbacks from Black Sparrow Press, some signed, other first editions of poetry, an early illustrated Treasure Island, many old comic books, and that a leak in the shower slowly crept under the wall, up into the rug, and into the boxes of neat stuff, which over a period of months molded into worthlessness.
I really loved some of that stuff. That was in one rented house; in another, the garage sprung a leak and flooded out yet another box of comics.

What about all the records I sold and lost over the years? God. To get money for Night Train Express I brought three book collections into the second hand record and book store in Santa Cruz Ca....
Or the silver half dollar collection...

I had three indian blankets, two very large and colorful, and a small brown one. Twenty years ago I lent them to a couple of friends. I came into town to retrieve them and found the two girls had fled the house, leaving their now apparently psychotic boyfriend behind, and all their own stuff too. He was a Sheriff. The girls were deathly afraid of him. I learned today some ball park prices of those two lost rugs and it made me a little sick, because I'm trying to get the bread together to buy a Carver Amp. I'm selling the little brown one.

The books hurt the most. I loved those books. Reading Bukowski was like talking to a kindred spirit. He and a special handful of other authors saved my life many times.

I don't know all I've lost. Like a movie, a cartoon, like Dorthy in Wizard of OZ in the Tornado watching all that stuff fly by, things just out of my fingertips I could not keep or hold onto. How about my Raliegh Ten Speed with all Campanola parts? They'd be antique today and very very expensive.

No one here gets out of a alive. And not all the stuff makes it to the end of the journey.
Some people seem better suited to hold onto all this stuff. It's funny. They accumulate it without incident, not lose it by capricious or willfull disregard.

Oh Well. The boys get lots of 'stuff' when I'm gone. They'll be heavily armed with funtioning artifacts from their father; M1A's and AK's and FN's and khuks and what not. Those things are a part of me and may hold value to them beyone bucks, or they may lose some foolishly as I did.

To all the collectors who've managed to accumulate, I give you a nod.



munk
 
Bukowski eh? A dear friend Gary, who's since walked west turned me on to Bukowski. I need to read more of his stuff, but what I've read was gritty. Real life unadorned. With a sardonic humor.

I knew there was something I liked about you.......
 
Thirty years from now, after the neighbors call the authorities to say they haven't seen me in a week or three, they will come into my little hermits house, and find just a pathway through each room. "Whoa, where did he get all this STUFF, they will wonder." "Geez, there's junk from all over the world". There I'll be, mummified in my chair in front of the antique computer screen. The accumulation of 8 decades will be sold at auction to people who don't know what it is.

I doubt I'll be much better off than you at that point Munk. :o ;)

Steve
 
ferguson said:
The accumulation of 8 decades will be sold at auction to people who don't know what it is.
Click to expand...

Not, if we can help it; not that we're rushing you ..... really, I would you keep us company for a LOOONNNNG time. :D

n2s
 
Munk,

I lost my first million when the parents threw out the comic book collection, and it has never gotten any easier. I think that is the reason that they invented beer.:)

n2s
 
My father was an accumulator. I threw away 25 TRS-80 Radiio Shack / Tandy computers for instance.

The only weapon / collectable he left was a 20guage LC Smith feild grade shotgun. I got it, he hunted as a boy in the Mystic mountains.

I inherited a beat up old Chrysler from my grandfather.

But the intangible things I inherited were far greater. Fomr my grandfather a love of life and being able to look for the good. You may have to shovel off a load of crap, but there is good in every situation.

From my father a firm grounding in religion and the belief that there was no security in having a job. "Get your own business."

Also, I learned from his negative aspects that I better get my life together and take responsibility for myself, becasue he was going to let me down again and again.

My mother told me that I could do anything. She encouraged me all her life and was an incredible role model.

But the bottom line is that I am grateful for what I inherited. I am happy being me. I told mother and dad that many times.

Sometimes --- hell no! not SOMETIMES --- the intangibles are better, more enduring than the "things" that seem to come and go.

I would be willing to bet that when we step out of the picture, or fall out, or get dragged out (whatever takes me out will have claw marks on it) --- but when I'm gone, I hope that people remember the intangibles I passed to them.
 
Bill, it's wise to love your father despite his faults. The only people who do not let us down are those who are not with us long enough to do so.


munk
 
not2sharp said:
Munk,

I lost my first million when the parents threw out the comic book collection, and it has never gotten any easier. I think that is the reason that they invented beer.:)

n2s
Click to expand...

Hey, if it makes you feel better, I only got $50k for my comic book collection when I sold it to move back to California. I had all the X-Men from issue #1 to issue #234 ( I think) + a lot of other stuff obviously. 25 years later I still miss it sometimes, but at least I got something for it. :)
 
The death of jean gray. (sic) A Berkley lit professor stole the key comics from a mutual friend and then wish-washed it away.
He said he could no longer remember exacly which comics were his. I went to school with this guy. I once read at a poetry club downtown and he wussed out and didnt' come. His girl friend split when she found he'd lied about it.

50K?
Most I ever got for whatever was left of my comics was 400.00 which I used to buy a Ruger Redhawk. A man's got to have his priorities. The Xmen would approve.

munk
 
I try not to get too attached to things, it only leads to suffering. But I'm not always successful at it, I'm no Bodhisatva. I have a few things from my Grandpa (the only man in my life to ever stick around). His Minolta, a Case Bowie, a Wenger SAK, a couple of beautiful pipes and a long wool coat. I treasure them not because they are worth money but because they were his.

I've lost some cool stuff over the years. A few of cool old cars I couldn't afford to restore and didn't have room to keep. A '64 Pontiac Tempest. A '65 Plymouth Valiant with bucket seats, a factory V8 and console shifter. A '78 Lincoln Continental Town Car. All cool in their own way. All gone.

Too many books and comics gone. Some destroyed by a leaking garage. Some loaned out to friends only to vanish. CDs too. A pair of oxblood Doc Martens from the 80s that a teething puppy took a liking to.

I've said goodbye to more than a few critters over the years. That's the hardest thing to lose. Sidney, Muffin, Stormy, Plissken, Cherokee, Annie, Shane, April, Caramon, Tasslehoff and, recently, Luna. I miss every single one of them.

Frank
 
I come from generations of good southern collectors, er, never throw away-ers. And I seem to be catching on quick. Its a trait I fear to repeat with their zeal, so ocasionally, I go through and junk a bunch of stuff thats just gathering dust. I'm always proud and sad when I'm done. Its a real good shame.
 
I've got too much stuff, little of it collectable. But scattered among the garbage that's never made it to the curb, there's the occasional treasure.

As I've said here before, my dad's got Alzheimer's. Mom was going through some of his stuff and sent me a care package not long ago. Boat plans and piloting books, for vessels he dreamed of building ... voyages he made countless times in his mind.

However much he wanted to sail in the tradewinds, Dad fundamentally felt that the "cruising lifestyle" was selfish - a life lived only for your own pleasure. He believed that life was more about living in service. Joy was a by-product of service, deeper and more satisfying than pleasure.

Looking through his creased and yellowed cruising boat plans, bought when he was my age or younger, the treasure isn't the documents - most of these are boats I wouldn't want, myself. The treasure is the memory of his personal struggle and its resolution. He ended up spending 7 years in Brazil's poor North East province, where he'd planned to work with poor fishermen to build more durable, low-cost boats. He ended up creating a brick-making co-op in a slum, where everyone made 1000 bricks/month, and every 4 months somebody could finally build a home. But as somebody once said, a house is just a boat built too heavily to move.

The treasure in the care package from my Mom is that now I carry those memories for him. I carry his private daydreams, wishful thinking scribbled in the margins in out-of-date numbers. I see how he tried to make his dreams fit with his conscience. And I understand those dreams a helluva lot better than when those plans arrived at the house in brown paper envelopes when I was a 15 year old.

The treasure is in my 7 year old, asking if we can cook in the Community Kitchen on Saturdays this Fall. In my 13 year old, dropping out of the school soccer team so he could volunteer with the school's “leadership” program instead. In my 15 year old daughter joining a particular youth group so she could help plan the literacy project they’ll do in Belize next March. My dad’s choices for service are still bearing fruit.

I look at the boat plans on my bedside table, and wish that he knew.
 
After my mother died, my father went through all her stuff, gathered up all of her personal writings, etc, as well as virtually everything from the Witze side of the family--pictures, letters, family history stuff, mandolin-- took it out in the back yard, and burned it before I even got a chance to go through anything. That's a treasure I wouldn't mind getting back somehow.
 
Ouch! Whether just dealing with his own pain, or whether there's more to the story ... what a loss. I'd have been furious.
 
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