Later this afternoon we’re planning to go out to my uncle’s house again. Hopefully, this will be the last time. Anything that is left in the house, after this trip, will just be, well, left in the house.
We’ll be removing two bookcases this trip, both packed full of books about VietNam and the military in general. One of the bookcases will go in my living room, and the other will go to my sister’s house in Fishers. My bookcase is a tall plain wooden one, that he bought in a store. The other bookcase, he made in shop class in junior high. That bookcase is beautifully carved and would cost a fortune if anyone tried to buy it in a store. Junior high shop class. My uncle was very talented.

Zappa will be taking all the books.

Then we’ll walk through the house, making sure there’s nothing left in it that we want.
So many people have been in and out of his house, removing things, NOT removing things, etc. It makes me sad. It makes me wonder how people will, some day, deal with removing the things from MY house. Accept, reject, accept, reject, SCREAM, reject, mock. . . . .

And when I think of all the things my uncle had in his house, things he chose, things he liked, things he kept, that nobody else cares enough about to even bother to store, it makes me sad.

But, I don’t want them either.

All those other trips down there to his house were made in warm, then HOT, weather. Today it’s freakishly cold, even for unreliable Indiana weather. Maybe it will be easier to load and unload in this weather.

There are still tons of sealed boxes in his garage. We are all so worn out with opening, inspecting, accepting, and rejecting all of his things, that probably nobody will even open them to see what he packed away and sealed up. From a military standpoint, there are some real treasures in there.

I do not generally have a military standpoint. There is nothing of that sort that I want. Zappa chose a few things weeks ago, but nobody else wants them. And we are all just too tired of dealing with it now, to advertise or haul it away ourselves. We don’t have the means, the energy, or the time. It’s a shame, but we just don’t.

There are also a lot of household treasures in there. Dishes, glassware, pots and pans, etc. Somewhere, there is someone who would really welcome these things. Everyone seems to want them delivered. We just can’t do that.

In his living room, on a built-in bookshelf, there is a huge perfectly round grenade. The older people (older than me, just imagine!) are frightened to death of it. Zappa looked it over and is pretty sure it’s a dud. Key words: “pretty sure.” I had never seen such a large shiny grenade. It’s almost pretty, in a death-dealing creepy kind of way.

Heaven only knows what’s in some of those sealed boxes. Heaven only knows, and we will never know.

It all makes me want to go through my own house and pitch everything that could possibly make someone else say “Gross, why would she have kept THAT?”

But there is also that part of me that says, “Because I liked it. What’s it to ya?”

You’d think a person would know which is which. But I don’t.

Sentimental things are just that: sentimental. How could someone else possibly ‘judge’ what is good sentiment and what is tacky sentiment? The greatest sentimental things of all, are often ‘tacky.’ And they mean absolutely nothing to anyone else.

I myself have a large sealed box down in the garage, full of school notes, ribbons, ticket stubs, restaurant receipts, bronzed baby shoes, old pictures, jewelry, programs, etc, that are as I type, decomposing. They are tacky personified. Nobody else would ever want them. I haven’t looked at them in years.

But I know they’re down there. And once in a blue moon, I think of them, and smile.