Cleanup in the attic

It’s possible to break a sweat just taking inventory.
That’s because there’s absolutely no ventilation in the attic of our garage.
I’d ventured up there this weekend feeling moderately ambitious. Last year’s big spring-cleaning project was the garage itself, and that has paid huge dividends. It’s still possible to get a car into it with only some minor shuffling here and there.
But the attic was left for another time.
That’s been its problem: It’s always being left for another time.
When we bought our house from Lou and Eula Wasmuth, some of their relatives helped empty the property. The Wasmuths were in Arizona, and their health made it impossible to return. But as the final day wore on, the helpful relatives decided that the attic of the garage was beyond them.
They left stuff behind.
Trouble is, that was in 1981.
There wasn’t much at that time. A few odds and ends that Lou had brought home from Portland Motor Parts, hoping to re-purpose them at some point. But mostly it was junk.
And junk, as we all know, attracts junk.
Over the past 30 years, we’ve added to the richness of the attic collection, so that now it’s a virtual cornucopia of forgotten crap.
Over the weekend, surveying the mess in the stifling air, I tried to take a sort of inventory.
I found:
•At least two sleds.
•A baby pool.
•Two bicycles.
•Four kitchen chairs painted red and white that the Wasmuths left behind.
•At least one Christmas tree stand.
•The box for a Tandy 1000 home computer. That’s so we could send it back to Radio Shack if it ever malfunctioned. It never did.
We gave the computer to some young friends about 20 years ago. For some reason, we kept the box.
•A dead computer printer. (Doesn’t every household in America own at least one of these?)
•A stereo turntable in need of repair. (It’s been replaced, and I doubt parts are available to fix the broken one, which dates from the 1970s.)
•The rusting hulk of a pedal car that I always told myself I’d restore. These days, there’s more rust than hulk, but I can’t let go of the dream.
•Tents — at least two — and boxes of miscellaneous camping gear, including at least one propane camping stove that I bought at the Jay County Fair. It later blew up one night while we were camping at Hermit Island in Maine. Nothing was hurt in the brief blow-up except my pride.
•A crib, the kind that the government now says is too dangerous for babies. In other words, it’s not a crib; it’s kindling.
•A few boxes of plates celebrating the American Bicentennial in 1976. We agreed to store them for a long-gone committee and haven’t yet delivered them to the Jay County Historical Society. I saw one of the plates on eBay recently.
They represent a nice piece of local history, with Portland’s concrete bowstring truss bridge on a plate made by Indiana Glass Co., formerly of Dunkirk. The reason the boxes haven’t been delivered is that they’re heavy and the stairs to the attic are a little treacherous.
•And, last but not least, more junk.
I scratched my head as I looked around at the stuff, and then I felt that mild ambition that had sent me up to the attic in the first place begin to fade away.
I’ll get around to it one of these days.[[In-content Ad]]