I could cry.

We are in the homestretch of preparations for a yard sale that we are having with my sister-in-law this weekend. Over the weekend just passed, we went to my in-laws’ house to pull a bunch of my wife’s old stuff out of storage there. “Storage,” in this case, was an old trailer that had the windows busted out, the door torn off, the floor somewhat torn up and part of the roof partially caved in. Climate-controlled storage, it wasn't.

“Hey, old vinyl records!” Wife exclaimed as she moved a box out of the way. Her mom said, “You can have them,” and went to get an empty storage container to help us transport them to our house.

I started going through some of the old 45 records last night and trying to get an idea of what they might be worth. I found that a copy of the Rolling Stones’ “Paint It, Black” recently went for $14 or $15 on eBay. Of course, the copy that I dug up doesn’t have a sleeve, and has been essentially in the weather for a number of years, and has decade-old dust on it, and may or may not be playable. Sigh.

Going through those records last night, I found a virtual fool’s goldmine. An old Patsy Cline 45! … with the remnants of a mud dauber’s nest on it. An old Buck Owens single! … with a big chip taken out of the edge. Bill Haley and His Comets! … which looks like it’s been scrubbed with Comet and steel wool.

I could cry.

(Hey, did you know that in the South, mud daubers are commonly called dirt daubers? I love regional dialect. “It’s a Coke!” “No, it’s a soda pop!” “No, it’s a soda!”)

I did learn one thing that may or may not be of interest to anyone: The B-side to Glen Campbell’s “Galveston” single is an apparent paean to poison ivy called “How Come Every Time I Itch I Wind Up Scratching You?” Hee.

Anyway, when two packrats marry, you end up with what, in the long run, appears to be a lot of crap that neither can bear to part with. For instance, when I lived in Bloomington with the Captain and G.I. Matt, the wall above my bed was covered from corner to corner and ceiling to mattress with old concert flyers from the various shows in town around the time, and I kept old setlists from the shows we attended in those days. Really, there is probably nothing more than barely-negligible sentimental value in an old Uvula concert flyer or a Real Lulu setlist from the winter of 1998, and there is no valid reason to hang on to them. None! Still, as soon as they came out of the box they were stored in, they went right back in and right back upstairs; there wasn’t even a thought of disposing of them.

(“Well, at least you’ll still be able to associate those items with your memories of those shows,” one might say. Memories? Hell, I was usually three-quarters lit by the time the opening band hit the stage; my memories of Second Story’s bathroom are a lot more vivid than those of most of the Smart Milk shows I went to. And I really liked Smart Milk in those days. I even told them so. Probably a little too exuberantly, though.)