(Second dumpster filled up by three pm. Photo Socotra).

I had a chance to ponder many things after I got Spike to Pellston Regional airport for his (gulp) 0540 flight. They must originate the string-of-pearls routes here, places like Cheboygan and Alpeena being the next stops on the way to a great hub at Detroit or Chicago. You have to start somewhere, I imagine, since no one in a real town would get up this early to insert themselves into the air traffic system.

The village adjacent to the airport- no grand “International” in the name- was silent at quarter to five. The approach lights to the field and the navigation strobes lit the night with strange vigor, like a garage light left on after the owner has gone to bed.

Spike stuck his hand in the window of The Beast after I asked him to check and ensure his airplane was really there and his departure was for real. “I can’t thank you enough for coming,” I said. “This would have killed me.”

“I had to be here,” said my brother.

“And you get to leave,” I said. But I grinned. “There really isn’t that much left that we cannot throw away.”

(Spike finds another pile of crap. Photo Socotra).

I returned to the house thirty miles south, exchanging flickers of high beams with the oncoming traffic. There was no artificial sweetener in the kitchen to doctor the coffee, the jar that contained the yellow envelopes having disappeared in the chaos of the previous afternoon and the wreckage of the Chinese take-out that constituted dinner.

I drank my morning pot with Pond Hill Farm raw honey, which has been lingering in the fridge from a couple trips back. It is filling me with energy, and a certain unwarranted optimism that I can get this task done and get on with life.

I curled up with the email I had ignored the day before in my makeshift office on the card table in the kitchen. I read one thoughtful note about the statistical likelihood that voters make up their minds about the Presidential election six months before the actual voting.

That makes the decision point next month. The old slogan “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” has a certain resonance, don’t you think? I have to say, that all things being equal, I am better off. At least I have an idea about my future and some major things that will not be in it.

Notably, that includes this wonderful house, this spectacular view, and the crushing weight of all the things that filled this space: files, notes and knick-knacks.

Raven and Big Mama were the last of each of their generations, and they never could bear to part with anything that came their way, and Big Mama loved to organize it, annotate where appropriate, and jam into some box or cranny.

Me? I am emotional. I had drinks at the end of Day Two with the expectation that we were essentially done with the job. I was so wrong. I have come to hate the crap that once was the backdrop to my life, and to those I love.

A second dumpster is full to overflowing, and it is that steel rectangle that stands between me and freedom.

That is not to say that I could not walk away from the mess as is. I have some great friends- Pam-the-Renter is a salt-of-the-earth gal who swears she will give the place a dusting when I am gone, even though we know the place is going to be gutted in the remodeling.

All projects have similarities, if they are big enough. Wild enthusiasm is followed by abject depression. Eventually they lurch to some sort of conclusion, with the search for the guilty and awards to the non-participants.

I was feeling lost somewhere between stage one and two.

There had been enormous progress. The important furniture is gone, two sets of china packed neatly with the remaining antique furniture and a full moving van full of useful things had gone to the Goodwill. A dumpster had been filled and collected.

What is left is…crap. Another full dumpster load worth. There are mounds of plastic organizers to contain the detritus of the long and productive lives of people who could not throw anything out. I suppose it was the Depression still calling out to them, I thought, hurling packets of cancelled checks, some as much as thirty years old, neatly sequenced and bound with disintegrating rubber bands into the maw of the dumpster.

Mom kept some of my old fitness reports from the Navy. All of them have my social security number on them, prominently placed in the upper right corner. I have no idea what has been pitched, since at some point it becomes the act of numbly picking up files and scattering them into the chest-high green steel box.

We engaged a young man named Caleb to serve as a spare pair of hands and a strong back at $12 an hour. Another good local Up Northerner. I am going to ask him to shuttle between the dump and the Goodwill today, and he was ruthless in the library, though a quick inspection at day’s long end yesterday revealed another cabinet of obsolete format floppy discs and office supplies.

Caleb had no sensitivity to the objects, and I was mildly surprised to find my mood of hostility to the junk with which I was either directly or indirectly associated all my life. I am working under the assumption that what my Mom placed in her meticulously organized binders is what was ready for prime time, and suitable for preservation for another generation. Those are in storage, I think.

The family photos have migrated down to Dee’s house on Torch so she can look at them.

I am glad she too them. If I had seen those precious things yesterday afternoon, I would have hurled them into the green metal void.

This would be fairly easy to walk away from, as I say. I have the money and no longer own the house. But I am a man of some honor and have an obligation to clean up the mess as best I can, gimping around on one leg.

There is nothing here that cannot now be hurled into the gaping jaws of the green steel beast.

I am one dumpster away from liberty.

(Spike’s nest on the floor on Day Three. The beds had gone away that afternoon. Photo Socotra).

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com