Over time, the stuff is viewed from useful, to pure junk. But what is useful, and what is junk? Or I should say, what is, and is not trash?
What is treasure, what is useful, and what is junk, are like beauty, it is in the eye of the beholder.
I love the way old things were built, there is nothing like an 8-foot-long handmade harvest table, made of real 2 by 12 slabs of hardwood, and square nails. Then there is the old console Victrola, the cabinet is polished and solid, the sound scratchy, loud and solid in it’s own right. There is no volume control, you have to take the front of the speaker grill off, and stuff a sock in it. We use the term without thinking where it originated, or what it means.
We decided to have a yard sale and get rid of some stuff; one item being the console Victrola.
The Victrola has a nice record storage section built in, and most of the records were 33 1/3, Long Play Stereo. Why were they stored in a hand cranked Victrola, with playing needles large enough to be used to sow elephant hide? God alone knows. But two of those records are something I treasure. You see I collect all things Space Program. The first record pulled from the cabinet was Go!! Colonel John Glenn in Orbit. The next day, finding more records, my wife found another LP record, We Came in Peace for All Mankind. I had never heard of either one.
Well, these two finds sent us searching through every item, opening up old tins, shaking out old books, and writing tablets. Looking between album covers and records. We looked into places most people would not think to look.
We found treasures in a lot of places. Old photos, old notes about mundane things from 52 years ago. Old letters, written but never sent. Bibles given to people, long ago departed. Tickets to amusement parks that have long since stopped issuing tickets to specific rides. Old stamps, old coins. And old memories. The old memories are best.
What I am attempting to say here, is never ever toss anything away or just throw it on the table to be sold. Look at it, look in it, look through it, savor the looking, even if you find nothing. The memory it gives, the love it was given, is a treasure you can keep with you, even as the item finds a new home, with new love, and new memories. And, just maybe, you will find the item, old, dusty and a little tarnished, as ever, is still loved, and still needed, and still part of you, a part which you cannot let go.