Over Thanksgiving, mom finally asked brother and me to get all of our remaining stuff out of her basement and garage. Felt like a character in a Tom Waits song going through all the things I, for whatever reason, felt sure 25 years ago that I would want to see again one day. Haven’t yet finished wading, but a quick laundry list of dusty relics, circa 1978-1983:
- Bag full of punk rock, new wave, and dada buttons and badges (I actually owned a badge-a-matic badge maker for a while), though only about half the stuff in this bag is homemade.
- Brutally embarassing daily journals from my year in Australia, 1983. Hardly seems like these words came from my own mouth. Am I still me? Equally embarassing box of love notes to and from random girls.
- Boxes and boxes of sealed-but-dusty MAD Magazines, plus comics: Howard the Duck, X-Men, Fantastic Four, Flakey Foont, Mr. Natural…
Reams of output from a junior high mechanical drawing class, including this worshipful rendering of the Pioneer SX-450 stereo amplifier, mysteriously dated 5/18/20 rather than 5/18/80. Probably an early example of the same kind of inexplicable screw-up I’m famous for today.- Box of Boy Scouts and Indian Guides merit badges, medallions, belt buckles, headbands, and wood-burning experiments.
- Piles of early 80s Surfer, Surfing, and Thrasher magazines (yesterday hauled these down to the surf shop I used to work at and gave them to the current employees, who were “way stoked”).
- Boxes of class papers from high school with mortifying titles like “Toe jam through the years, or the rise and fall of communism” (Got an A on that one, which says more about my teachers than about me).
- Hand-made ceramic tennis shoe in black & white, with real shoelace. Hand-made ceramic “anarchy A” glazed in bright orange.
The task now is to trim the pile to just a couple of boxes, which guarantees an entire weekend shot. Such a sentimental fool.
Music: Pere Ubu :: Ray Gun Suitcase
sounds like you have a date with eBay :) you can probably finance all your christmas shopping for the kid!
We recently went through a late grandma-in-law’s things and really enjoyed looking through the same kinds of things from her childhood. I only knew her in her 80’s, so it gave me a view of her early life that I never could have gotten otherwise. It was quite an experience.
Don’t get rid of all those boxes, and do save some of the “random” stuff. =)
Wow!! Cool picture ID. There was a Morro Bay JUNIOR High School?!? Based on the pirate logo, I’d guess it must have been a combo with the High School (before Los Osos Jr. High was built). (I’ve still got all of MY old school stuff too). You DID go to LOJH at least 1 year, didn’t you? Regardless, we missed you at the 20 year HS reunion. Very good crowd – a lot of us had changed a lot…some have remained stuck in time.
Brand-o!!! How cool to see you here. Yep indeed, MBHS served grades 7-12 before LOJH was built. So I did 7th grade there, and then got switched to LOJH for 8th grade. Can’t believe I’m reminscing about that *here* with *you*.
I was very sad not to have been able to make the 20th reunion, but just couldn’t do two things at once that were equally important to me. Promise it won’t happen again!
P.S. The chances are very high that you’re the only person reading this blog who actually ever *saw/heard* the amplifier above. In fact, I used to “produce” KHBS on that amp!
Ahh.. The 80s badge collection. Me and my sister both had pillow sheets covered in badges hanging on our bedroom walls for the longest time. No idea what ever happened to them, though.