"The Ragpicker's Dream"

We have all moved.

Several months ago I moved into an apartment over the Tillery's garage in Knotts Island, North Carolina. (Note: There is no house to this garage. The Tillerys live miles away.)

My relocation to the garage last fall was precipated by a desire on the part of my soon-to-be-former wife that I vacate the marital premises with all due haste.

Our house was placed on the market and, yesterday, sold. Our final act as a couple was to execute a parking lot exchange of the detritus that had wound up in the wrong camps. Mine was contained in a cardboard moving box. I picked it up, bid adieu, and moved on with my life.

Early last evening, I arrived back home at the garage, tired from the long drive, exhausted from the process, and, enormously relieved. I unloaded the car, put the food in the fridge, laundry in the washer, mail on the desk, and the box on the floor nearby.

• Hours later, I became curious about that which I had somehow left behind. I thought that you, my loyal readers, with memories of your own last departing looks at former houses after a move, might have an interest as well in knowing the contents of the box:Seven audio books and CDs including 8 Weeks to Optimum Health, The Odyssey, A Tale of Two Cities, The Iliad, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman, The Anventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Farewell to Arms, and Jim Lizotte's 2005 Christmas CD.
• A small dark Vermeeresque framed print of a lone woman in a white hat reading alone. From earlierst memory, this picture has given me the creeps. Why do I insist on keeping it? It was my mother's.
• A severely tarnished sterling silver Owl Club ice bucket which I have never used and of which I remain incapable of disposing.
• A small red carved Japanesey box that used to live in the top drawer of a mahogony drop leaf side table. Inside the box are four two inch sections of leg, sawed off years ago to assure the table's fit in whatever space it was then accommodating.
• Two Tiffany paperweights, each a parting gift after a speaking engagement.
• Two tire pressure guages.
• A liner adjustor for my ski helmet.
• Dozens of McLean family snapshots, some framed, some in plastic baggies (one, in fact, a Jacobi family snapshot.)
• A single polished stone bookend.
• A beaded keychain with a NATO 7.62 rifle bullet attached.
• Two picture holders swipped from a table at Sarah & John's rehersal dinner.
• A Washington, DC region bike map.
• A cork McLean of Duart coaster.
• Assorted unopened credit card offers touting breathless interest rates.

It was like Christmas, of course. Each item a treasure (I always wondered where those ski helmut pads were...I wonder if they'd work on my bike helmet.) The book end is now holding up books, the paperweights now secure papers from pesky ocean breezes.

As I write, I am transferring items to the most excellent key chain. The family snapshots have renewed immediate interest given my brother Don's recent passion for the subject.

I never did listen to For Whom the Bell Tolls, still have interest in Optimum Health, and REALLY missed Jim's Christmas CD this year.

The Vermeer will be rehung, continue to give me the creeps, and forever remind me of my mother (kindly ignore the association.)

Anybody want a DC bike map - still in the original plastic sleeve?

It goes on EBay next week.

Thank you for visiting.

Jack