Perhaps this too was strange...

To get to the point of this short tale, you have to come along with me for a while and get a feeling for my day. It won't take long, as I seem to leave most of my stories between my brain and the keyboard, expecting the reader to fill in the missing pieces. Someday I will reread before publishing...


Anyway, the day started with rain and strong winds, making me glad that I had tarped my pickup before going in last night. It was jammed with booty for the dump. Everything from drywall to old shock absorbers to shreds of clothing worn by members of my family no longer living.


You see, there was this place in the family barn where my parents "put stuff". Yesterday was the 2nd stage of cleaning this area in anticipation of rebuilding this part of the barn. This part of the barn is fairly open to the elements but dry enough to stop most rot and allow only a little rust. It is the 2nd floor, kind of a mezzanine sort of affair. Unfortunately this area was also very open to someone tresspassing in our barn, something that a lot of cherry pickers and renters had done over the last few decades. So things got broken, disappeared and were scattered from their original boxes. No one seemed to care. This spring, as we looked through the contents, we only found junk - oh look, a whole album of 331/3 Sachmo records - only to find them all broken into many pieces. There was a very cool suitcase that bees had been living in for many years - it still remains in the barn and should be in a museum.


Anyway, almost all of that stuff got in the truck and today it was going to the Marion County dump. After arriving at the dump, while I was removing my tie downs and straps so I can remove the required tarp, I watched a middle-aged woman attempt to backup her SUV with a trailer full of trimmings. She was so not going to be successful. Oh so many people cannot back up - to me, it is not even nice to watch someone failing to backup, the suffering is so great. Just as I got my tarp off and was about to go offer my services, another gentleman offered assistance. And lordy, I don't think he had backed up anything before...


As I pulled out old stationary bikes, bike frames, broken pottery, shredded clothing and broken glass, there were no surprises (I had loaded it after all...), it was satisfying to throw them in the pit. The dry wall was on the bottom, beneath the 50# mirror that we got from Randall's dad, Lefty, for some reason. I had just got the last piece of drywall in the pit and was picking up pieces and a small picture frame came to my attention. It was about 2"x3" as I turned it over, I found inside a perfectly preserved picture of me, just prior to graduating from high school.. Cool! a find! although I did happen to still have the same picture and in fact still have the high school album that it was taken for but still, it was in good shape and a find. Here it is:




Thinking that was about it, I picked up some broken glass, a few this and thats and then picked up the last piece of paper, turned it over to find another picture of me. This picture shows me sitting in a rocking chair, a chair currently in my living room. It was probably taken when I was 12 or so. I have no memory of this picture and probably have never seen it before but now I have it. Curious.