Here is who should never own a rolltop desk: ME! If you're a pack rat, and I am, the temptation to toss things into this black hole of the desk family is irresistible. Too few of us rolltop aficionados are equipped with the neat and orderly personality necessary for the proper utilization of its drawers and cubbies.
I bought my desk around 1971 and have moved it from Kansas to Florida to California to Washington and Nevada before returning to California for at least three more local moves and never bothered to do more than lock it. This month, in anticipation of another interstate move, I decided to tackle the job of cleaning and sorting the contents for the first time in forty years.
My God! It's a freaking time capsule! I have now spent days looking at old pictures, memos from angry bosses, birthday cards, funeral and wedding announcements, small toys and general reminders of bad habits long since ditched. When did I smoke a pipe? Beats me, yet here one is. Old contracts from radio stations whose call letters have changed at least a couple of times since they fired me are right here next to letters from friends and relatives now long in the ground. Messages from dead people are downright strange to read. Do I save them or, like their composers, bury the remains? It's a dilemma.
I have found files full of old news stories that amused me--like the one involving the gynecologist bent on revenge-- and correspondence from listeners to my radio show in several different cities. (Note to millennials: before the Internet, people wrote letters.) I especially enjoyed re-reading the invitation from a woman in Tampa to come "visit" after her husband had gone to work. She made a point of reminding me that my show was over at 10AM and that was perfect since her husband would be downstairs embalming bodies in their funeral parlor at that time. She even sent a picture erasing all doubt as to whether or not she had access to her husband's make-up kit. There was also a note from the woman in South Dakota's state goon garage containing several au natural shots of herself draped across the hood of a '54 Ford. I still wonder what kind of mileage that baby got. The letters from the retired FBI man who enclosed copies of missives he had received from old J. Edgar Hoover himself made me wonder once again about the late director's proclivities. Very creepy.
Old pictures of my kids and the special book they made for me during the time I was commuting each week from Las Vegas to San Diego caught me by surprise. It reminded me of how much I love them and how, like an ice cream cone on a hot August afternoon, our time together is melting away.
Yesterday I discovered my old Army compass, a toy truck given to me by a relative in the 1950's and the first transistor radio I ever owned. Though it no longer works I'll be hanging on to that piece of outdated technology as a reminder of the treacherous path it led me down.
Checking the clock I see that it's time to get back to work with this excavation. For as long as I've been at it you'd think the damn desk would look slightly more, uh…..clean. It occurs to me that perhaps this project is just too large for me to handle.
Another approach may be called for.
Got a match?
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| The forty year time capsule from hell |
