Glad you moved this here. It improves with the re-reading - or does it simply grow mold? I am notarizing affidavits as Eddie produces them and faxing them to our client in Seattle, and am otherwise mindless with exhaustion, so my brain is as clean and receptive as a petri dish. Ready for all species of colorful mold to grow.

Another rich source for strange stuff is an "estate". My parents were fairly private people, and even we kids were not permitted to go through their stuff - while they were alive. I got my dad's desk after he passed - with all his stuff still in it. I kept the contents of the inner drawer with all the old grease pencils, sealing wax, and antiquated electrial connectors just as he left it, only occasionally adding to the collection, if I felt some small useless object was appropriate, or occasionally searching for a picture hanger or an automobile fuse. It still smells the way it did when my brother and I used to sneak up and take a quick peek inside when our folks were not around. Big adventure - looking inside Daddy's Desk. My mother passed, and I was her executor. Suddenly I was let loose in her house. It still spoke eloquently of her - the last little things left on the ironing board, for example. I finally got to find out what she kept in her bureau drawers - old underwear, what else? But...."Mooooo-oom - I'm going through your stuuu-uuuuf...." It was like whistling past a graveyard - I kept waiting for her fury to erupt.

Daddy was a Mason, and we used to tease the hell out of the poor man the night after a meeting - he couldn't tell us what did happen, so we got to invent dancing girls and wild parties. But now Butch has his Masonic apron, and I have his Masonic Ritual books. Arcane secrets revealed! (I always thought the "G" in the Masonic symbol stood for "George" - my father's name.)

But the evocative, sad small Stuff: I have now in my kitchen drawers Dad's wooden folding carpenter ruler that I remember playing with as a child. Each of us kids wanted something odd like that. For my older brother Butch, it was Mom's aluminum colander. He said almost defensively, "I remember washing and drying it, and playing with it when I was a kid." You know, it isn't the thing itself - it's the feeling you get from it, and the memories it evokes. I wanted the big square mirror with the beveled edges that had hung in living room or dining room as long as I could remember. It is wooden backed, and has the name of the place where they purchased it, in Newark, New Jersey, in 1941, on the back. It has a misty quality now, as if it were reflecting ghosts, which for me it is.

But to illustrate the adage, One Man's Junk Is Another Man's Treasure: My folks had spent some years of their retirement in Florida, and my younger sister had lived with them and gone to college there, and evidently enjoyed the place. Mom and Dad had a painting from Florida, showing flamingoes flying off into a lurid Florida sunset. It was not painted on velvet, but had that quality. Well, my sister, who with her husband has probably a million dollars in original art in her house (no exaggeration - he's about a thousand years old and has been collecting for most of that time) - this sister of rare and selective good taste wanted That Picture. Not only that, she seemed ready to fight us for it. Good thing she spoke up - Butch and I were ready to include it in the estate sale of all the leftover stuff nobody wanted. As Mom used to remark, with a sniff, "There's no accounting for taste."