Grandpa Stoff

Captain Nemo's post, "Chuckin Stuff," reminded me of the high risks many LCL (low cash lifestyle) types take in hoarding stuff.

I don't mean having a kitchen cabinet filled with canned goods; canned goods are useful. I am talking about the truck whose driver sits in a cocoon of salt packs and neatly folded napkins. The deepfreeze in the back room containing trashbags of old clothes. The shelf in the garage covered by jars of various banned pesticides and parts for a vehicle you have never owned. (That's me!)

The issue with this is that if you are a hoarder, and you do not deal with your stuff, someone else will. Allow me to tell a story regarding my favorite hoarder.

Myself and my business partner purchased a house from his grandpa, whom I shall call "Grandpa Stoff." Grandpa Stoff was a hoarder of epic proportions. The cleanout was a nightmare: The man had a bucket of lightbulb ends. ENDS. Just the metal parts... just in case...

We also found: a bucket of melted lead, 30 years of Playboys missing their naughty pics, a 4"x4"x4" box labeled "toilet paper" with a solitary roll inside, nine cubic feet of rat feces, 12 hammers, no phillip's head screwdrivers, an assortment of glassware stolen from local restaurants, a literal ton of rusted and deformed iron pipe, and a large box filled with rubber bouncy balls.

Now, understand that Grandpa Stoff didn't buy all this stuff. Grandpa Stoff was a mailman, and would look through trashcans and take anything he thought had value. He would drag home vacuums just to cut the power-cords off of them. He would pocket the stolen glassware at the end of a meal. But the worst was yet to come...

There was a collapsing four-car garage at the rear of the property, and this is where we found our most terrifying remnant. Buried in the debris of the garage, we found a tightly wrapped grocery store bag. Inside this grocery bag was a used and abused electric buttplug!

This buttplug wasn't a modern silicon and battery powered device. This was old-school hard bakelite plastic with a coiled power cord so it could run off 120 volt household service. This was my business co-owner's grandpa's electric buttplug, likely recovered from a trashcan along his mail route. In a moment of perverse fascination, I plugged the unit in. It sounded like the damn space shuttle.

Sold it at the estate sale for $10. Thats right; I sold my buddy's grandpa's used electric buttplug at a public estate sale at the old family homestead.

So, the moral of the story? Go get rid of your crap. Otherwise, you will bring geriatric anal penetration shame upon your family for generations to come.

Asshead.