The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Scroungers, Packrats and Hoarders

Clyde stopped by our place yesterday, wanted to know if I wanted some wood flooring. Clyde’s notorious for scrounging lumber — beams, 2×4’s, plywood, chopped off rafters and joists full of nails — he takes it all, he and his partner Fred. They’re true South Enders, no building parts are too unworthy for future projects. No oddly shaped root or burled tree trunk couldn’t be imagined as a trellis or a doorway or a garden gate. Their greenhouse/apartment is a testament to homesteader ingenuity, from the recycled plumbing for a radiant heat floor to the gnarly limbs of a cedar tree that frame a window made from sliding glass door panels. The roof is raftered with bridge beams and salvaged lumber, all covered with earth and plantings, a green ecosystem.

So when Clyde asks if I want some wood flooring, red lights go off and a siren shrieks deep down in my hippocampus. “You don’t want it yourself?” I ask, meaning, what’s wrong with this flooring if you boyz are turning it down? Clyde avows how they don’t need flooring and anyway, it’s all mismatched remnants. Like they don’t have mismatched remnants from one end of their property to the next??? “Use em for furniture,” I advise. “I took my leftovers and made cabinets and bookcases, banjos, hell, it’s hardwood.”

“We’re jammed up,” Clyde says sadly. “Stuff we got now is getting powder post beetles. We couldn’t use it all in the rest of our lifetimes.” Which is true! They’re beyond Scroungers now, heading toward Hoarders. It’s a fine line, I know, and only a packrat like myself who’s scrounged most of his life is qualified to define the slip from Collector to Psychopathology. Clyde, I diagnosed, had stepped back from the Abyss. Enough was finally enough. Clutter was one thing, tunnels to the kitchen and bathroom quite another.

No mas! There comes a time when a sane man knows implicitly to STOP. Before it’s too late. Before madness descends like a dark curtain blotting light and reason.

Today I picked up 10 boxes of hardwood flooring, enough to lift the front end of my truck. No, I don’t really need flooring. But, you never know, right? Now if I can just figure out where to store all this wood until I need it….

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