Commentary

Past comes back to life, box by box by box

I spent two weeks trying to think outside the box and failed miserably.

My house is home to boxes. They dominate the mud room connecting the living room with the garage that my wife, Maggie, and I converted into a storage area. They sprawl in a back bedroom I once used as a reading room. They even make cameo appearances on the floor of the living room.

What’s in the boxes? I’m in the boxes, and so are my wife, my parents and my friends. We are all present and accounted for in newspaper clippings, letters, photographs, books, yearbooks and ephemera — Christmas cards and wedding announcements of more than 30 years.

Some of the boxes contain research material from my various historical and literary projects.

Not everything I have saved is boxed. Plastic tubs are beginning to proliferate. And there are the loose items part of everyday life: skis, tools, coolers, camping gear and briefcases — several empty Samsonites stored away in the event of a briefcase shortage.

It took me several years to begin parting with my stuff. At age 71, I finally concluded that if I didn’t make decisions about what to keep, what to send to archives, and what to throw out my heirs would be confronted with the Carey archeological dig — the Lake Minchumina Age, the Fairbanks Age, the Anchorage Age.

Looking at the boxes while imagining the days needed to go through them was so discouraging I was ready to quit before opening the first one. Summoning old sourdough wisdom, I told myself, “The trail may be snowed in above your knees, but you only will reach your destination if you keep moving.”

Maybe you have your own boxes to deal with. I’m pretty sure that as you open them you will say many of the same things I said to myself:

* I always wondered what happened to this.
* Did we need three of these?
* My uncle would love this — too bad he died.

Followed by the self-accusations: What was I thinking? Was I out of my mind?

I certainly was in a self-accusatory mode when I opened shoes boxes of income tax records from decades ago. They should have been shredded before Bill Clinton became president.

After the first day of box labor, I went to bed thinking every single thing that’s in those boxes is there because somebody wanted it there. Burglars didn’t break into my house and pile up boxes. Nor did movers in a long moving van pull up at the curb and begin unloading boxes. If they had, I would have shouted “Hey, I didn’t order all this stuff.” I am a victim of my own incremental creep — adding two or three items a day for years.

Maggie and I found ourselves humming “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” Like Mickey Mouse in the Disney film, we created a force we could not control.

A number of times, I took a break and checked eBay to see what some of my old treasures are worth. “Old,” I learned, does not guarantee value. I have copies of Popular Mechanics from the 1950s worth five bucks, and sheet music from songs inherited from my Dad, Fabian, worth three bucks. I will say that after reading the sheet music for the 1943 hit “Pistol Packin’ Mama” I know the words.

A couple of books I paged through had not been opened in decades. “Goldwater From A to Z” compiled by Arthur Frommer, the travel writer, is one. The book, from the 1964 presidential campaign, mocks Barry Goldwater in his own words. In a San Antonio speech, Barry said “As for those who say fear military men, I say fear the civilians — they are taking over.” I also found a wonderful collection of essays by the now-forgotten journalist John Lardner (1912-1960). In a profile of the middleweight boxing champion Stanley Ketchel (1886-1910) Larder described him as “The crude, brawling, low-living, wild-eyed, sentimental, dissipated, almost illiterate hobo, who broke every Commandment at his disposal….” A reader is compelled to know more about the champ.

I also unearthed extensive correspondence. Letters from my wife, my friends, my dad, my mother, and letters that I wrote to my mother and my dad that they saved, then I saved. Stored not in boxes or tubs but suitcases.

The friends of my youth clearly were influenced by Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. These hippies are on the road in the ’60s and early ’70s bewailing a country that has succumbed to fast food, shopping centers and tract housing. America, I have given you my heart and what have you given me, McDonald’s?

My dad wrote to me frequently, updating me on Fairbanks, the Legislature, sports news. (He sometimes used the blank side of football betting sheets from the Horse Shoe Cigar Store as stationery.) At the height of the Vietnam War he interrupted a commentary on the point spread to ask “You one of them revoltin’ students William F. Buckley is always complainin’ about? I sure hope so.” Not many college kids of the ’60s got a message like that from dad.

As for my letters to my parents during my college and post-college years, they stunned me. Clearly my primary intent was to convince my parents I would amount to something despite accumulating evidence to the contrary. These are the letters of a conformist who shows nothing of his rebel side. Melding the two proved difficult. No wonder I made an appointment with a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital to ask for help.

But then when you are a twenty-something what do you write to your parents? I was not going to tell them about sitting in the Fillmore Auditorium listening to Jefferson Airplane through a haze of marijuana smoke. Nor would I recount my afternoon adventures at the Albert Hotel with a woman who worked with me at the Greenwich Village bookstore.

Am I a hoarder? I don’t think I am there yet — I don’t collect tin cans or Tupperware.

But I appreciate the wisdom of the Hoarder’s Prayer: “Heavenly Father, maker of all that is seen and unseen, deliver us from boxes so we may live more orderly lives.”

Michael Carey is an Alaska Dispatch News columnist. He can be reached at mcarey@alaskadispatch.com

The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary@alaskadispatch.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@alaskadispatch.com or click here to submit via any web browser.

Michael Carey

Michael Carey is an occasional columnist and the former editorial page editor of the Anchorage Daily News.

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