The Magic Box of Crap
Like a nut of any stripe I’ve got my collections of the bizarre and the useless. As I have aged, I am afraid I have added to my collections, and further still, I have added collections. What once fit in a paper bag and a guitar case now requires a two-car garage for the four cars and the “collections”. Down here in this “basement garage” the tube radios, amplifiers, pulp novels, razors, toy cars, books, art and artifacts share space with various car parts: all Mopar of course.
I’m sure my collection can be dwarfed by many others out there moldering in garages, sheds, warehouses and barns. What strikes me about my collection is just how useless some of the bits seem to me. This realization occurs whenever I am looking for something I really need and wind up opening box after box of God knows what. Just the other day I realized that “NoNo” had once again bounced off her power steering pump cap and I went looking in the boxes for a replacement. I was so sure there had to be one there that I kept at it until I was ankle deep in junk in the last section of clear floor space in my garage.
No, I did not score. I did come up with three bare pump bodies, one body with pump and pulley, and another sans pulley with bracket. I even found “extra” belts too, worn out of course. I can’t even remember where or from what cars these things came from and I sure as heck don’t know why I have them anymore. With the exception of “NoNo” all our cars are manual steering and so shall “NoNo” be one day. (I am a masochist)
As my pile grew I found more questionable items. Greasy old stock breather caps are in abundance next to window cranks (broken), dinged hubcaps, mystery brackets, oddball lengths of hose, and one lone, once used ridge reamer. The only thing the reamer is good for is dredging up memories of an aborted 273 rebuild. The breather caps remind me of a harebrained scheme to chrome them. Ahem.
About a week later the pile was sorted and not one thing was thrown away. The cigarette burnt ’65 Dart armrest and base bunked up with a quadrillion ’66 Satellite tail light housings. Mystery brackets shacked up with a window regulator arm and I dutifully swept the floor and bade them all good night. I went to sleep that night and dreamt about scrounging East Bay bone yards with Bumbeck on some un-holy quest and me with a hangover wrestling leaf springs in the mud. I swear I woke up with a headache and dirty hands.
The real reason I keep this crap is “just in case”. It’s not for nostalgia or the false security of possession. Au contraire, they possess me. I drag them all about when I move and I rummage through them whenever “just in case” happens. The times are few and far between but “just in case” happens enough to make the boxes seem like some sot of magic treasure trove of the obscure. Forever they burp up the cure for the un-obtanium blues and satisfy that unbearable itch you get when “just in case” turns into “right now”. It’s not always a safe bet that the boxes will come through but when they do I feel kind of warm and fuzzy and I realize it’s time to hit the yards and re-stock. Winter is coming out here in California and I swear the mud is just perfect after a hard El Nino rain.
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