Archeology dig

I mentioned I went back to St. John's. That also meant a visit back to the house I grew up in. My family has lived in that house now since 1978. As a family, then just my dad, then just my mom, and then dad bought the place outright. The joke used to be I lived with the house. The parents were optional.

This isn't the first time I've been back there in decades or anything. It was less than two years ago. The place hasn't changed in that time. Reasonably sure it hasn't changed since the 1990s. My benchmark for determining this is the stereo.

The stereo has been sitting in the no-man's land between the living room and dining room for awhile now. How long? I think dad bought it around 1984. It was pretty cutting edge at the time, with it's duo-cassette deck drive. So you could play one tape and then, scandalously, copy the music by putting a blank in the other deck drive. Quite the controversy at the time, what with it making it easy to pirate music and all.

Anyway, cutting edge in the mid-80s. Not so much in later years. Pretty sure it died completely sometime in the mid-90s. So yes, for the better part of the past 20 years a dead stereo system in a wooden cabinet has been sitting in the living room for no reason.

We won't talk about my university grad picture in all its massive glory in the dining room, terrifying anyone who ventures forth to eat there (moustaches are never a good idea). Best not to dwell on it.

I've mentioned to dad he might want to do something about the stereo. He says he will and yet, there it rests in all its faded glory. I'm considering a flamethrower for Christmas as a method of internal redecorating/purging. Not for him...he'll never use it. But his niece lives in the basement apartment and his sister is a five minute walk away. I'm pretty sure they would. And he's going to Florida for a few months this coming winter. So we'll see how it goes.

However, since I was there I decided to do some poking around. Most of my stuff is long gone. Either up here, or sold. But there are a few things still there, so while talking with him, I put on my Indiana Jones fedora and decided to see what I could find.

Some of the stuff made me laugh. There's the hand-carved walking stick he brought me back from Cuba. I loved that thing because I thought I looked cool. Didn't have room to bring it back, alas. Plus, Cathy tends to put walking sticks in the same group as trenchcoats; things I do not look as cool using/wearing as I think I do.

There was a painting of the character Death from the Sandman comics my friend Mireille did for me around 1993. Really would have liked to have taken that back, but no room, alas.

In the closet there was an absolutely hideous brown lamb leather jacket that I seemed to have thought was a good idea around 1990. I informed dad it was not to go to good will, but to be taken out to the softball pitch behind the house in the middle of the night and set on fire. Ghastly. Still fits though, so that's one good thing.

But there were other cool things that I did rescue. In the same closet that produced the dreadful brown leather coat, also produced a black one that I didn't remember until dad refreshed my memory. He went to Australia in 2002 and brought me back a really nice black leather jacket. But he guessed wrong on my size. It was too small. I tried it on now and it fits perfectly. And it looks really good. So that was a nice find.

My old bedroom produced two interesting relics. The first was all my old letters. I used to write a lot of letters before email killed that. To pen pals mainly, but when I was in Korea in '97 I wrote letters to everyone. I'm told people thought I was writing in code to fool censors (I have terrible writing), but I have all the letters they wrote back.

So if you wrote me a letter between 1983 and 1999, odds are I have it. I'm really looking forward to going through those letters and see what comes up. A lot of embarrassing stuff. A lot of banal stuff. A couple of early gems include one I found from my grandmother that she wrote while I was in South Korea. I found a letter a woman sent me when I was with the Muse, thanking me for a story I wrote that helped her out (pretty sure it was the letter that cemented my belief that I should become a journalist). But I suspect I'm going to also laugh a lot and bug Cathy with 'I'd completely forgotten about this!" once I get going.

However, the real gem is "School Day Treasures". Back in Easter of 1975 my nan and pop Welsh gave me this book in advance of me starting Kindergarten. Each page was a year of school and you could put in all kinds of information. So there's a place for a picture, your report card, who your teacher was, how much you weighed, how tall you were, best friends, ambition (I was very determined to be an astronaut) and so on.

It is, at the very least, absolutely adorable. There's my infamous bowtie pic. The junior high pic where I looked like I was stoned. The report card that praised my handwriting (Grade 3. Seriously) the one where it was concerned I was too quick, mean and sarcastic (Grade 5. Sorry, Mr. Green. The progress you saw at the end of the school year was transitory) cracks me up.

It's a brilliant thing. I'm so glad nan and pop gave that to me. I've no idea if they still make these things or not, but they're awesome. I'm also pleased I kept up with it throughout school. Only Grade 2 and Grade 7 are missing pictures. I faithfully filled out the information and kept all the report cards. It would have been easy to stop doing that once I hit junior high, but I didn't. And now I have this brilliant thing.

I still think the house needs a purge. But I'm glad I grabbed these relics before it happened.




Last Five
1. Indestructible - Matthew Good Band
2. Gypsy biker - Bruce Springsteen
3. You can never hold back spring - Tom Waits
4. You got lucky - The Gaslight Anthem*
5. Thirsty - The National