Beech Tree News Network

“If I never see another rusty nail, it will be too soon!” I said this to Garey after cleaning out a corner in the basement of his mom’s house.  “You need a Tetanus shot just to look at that pile,” I added.  We are still in the throes of the never-ending cleanup that was Garey’s parents’ property.  Garey’s dad did a lot of carpentry work, so I understand his need for nails, but the assortment of hardware in that basement could easily set you up in a business to rival ACE.  I worked for two days in that area of the basement before moving to the upstairs of the house.  Garey’s sister, Charlotte, bragged on my ability to stay on task, as well as my organizational skills.  I was feeling pretty good about myself when I started working on one of the bedrooms upstairs.

Our daughter, Natalie, came down to help us for a couple of days, and when she saw what we were facing, she said, “No wonder Dad and Charlotte are so overwhelmed.”  

“If you look at it as one huge job, you do get overwhelmed,” I said.  “The key is to break it down into sections.  You have to create a hope zone in the midst of the chaos.”

I decided to make the small clothes closet in the bedroom my hope zone.  I started by pulling all of the quilts, boxes of material, shoes and rolls of upholstery out into the middle of the floor.  I sorted and threw away what the mice had destroyed, then grouped the things that could be saved back into new boxes.  I put everything back into the closet.  I stood back to admire my work.  Admiring your work is an important part of the process.  You have to be able to look at a success, so you can believe you can achieve another success.  I had created a hope zone, now I could move on to another area of the room.

 Garey was doing the heavy lifting by cleaning out the storage buildings outside. One building had a padlock with no obvious key, so he knew he would have to cut the lock off.  I say “no obvious” key, because we had plenty of keys…keys to every car, truck, door, garage, gate, storage building, safe, filing cabinet, chest, and steamer trunk they had ever owned.  It was easier to cut off the lock, then put a new one with the correct key back on it.  

Garey came into the house to tell me he had gotten the lock off the storage building.  

“What was in it?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, “I didn’t look.”

“How could you not look?” I questioned.

“I don’t want to see what’s in there,” he said.

“Well, I’m going to look,” I said.  I walked my little self out of the bedroom, down the front porch steps, over to the building and opened the door.  I wish I hadn’t looked.

The building is one of those large round metal buildings that resembles a silo, and it was stacked from the floor to near the ceiling with a microcosm of years gone by.  Metal chairs, feed sacks, fertilizer bags, wooden baskets, wood-burning stoves all amassed and mangled together into a knock off Gary Greff scrap metal sculpture.  I had met my match.

Maybe, I had become a little too smug in my abilities.  I had run into a situation with nary a hope zone in sight.  I closed the door.

“Don’t put the lock back on,” I said.  “Maybe, somebody will sneak in after we leave and steal some of it.”