October 7, 2004

• Hoard, sweet hoard!

  
  

  Kathy (aka SuSu) recently mentioned finding my ephedra stash and maybe blogging about hoards, so I decided to do it myself.  Actually, I prefer the term “stash” to “hoard”–to me, “hoard” implies a stockpile that is not meant to be used.  I don’t know what the dictionary definition is, don’t much care–like the Red Queen, when I use a word, it means what I want it to mean.  But I digress. 

  
  

   About hoards.  Lots of hoards.  Hordes of hoards.  (Don’t tell me you didn’t see THAT one coming!)  We have rocks and gems and crystals stashed all over the place.  There are still some rocks over at our old place, mostly on the floor amidst the trash in the mud room.  There still may be a few over at my old trailer, assuming that the would-be new owner hasn’t tossed them out.  But we do have rocks tucked away in all sorts of nooks and crannies in our new trailer.  One day I was  putzing around in the back room–the one we used to use as a grow room, now it is for storage–and I found, in a box with some other atuff, a baggie of emeralds.  Not jewelry-grade by any means, but real honest-to-gosh emeralds.  Maybe $100 worth or so.  We finds stuff like that almost any time we look–it is kind of like living in Ali Baba’s cave. (Come to think of it, his cave didn’t have plumbing or running water either, so it is a more apt metaphor than I’d thought. . . .)

  
  

  Early this summer, a local market had Campbell’s Chunky Soup on sale, half price.  I got maybe six cases of the stuff, and would have gotten more if I had more room in my cabin–it is 10×12 feet–3×4 meters, for the metric-minded.  More recently, canned veggies went on sale and I got four or five cases.  Again, I would have gotten more if we had more storage room. Right now, I am in the process of building up our squash hoard–the stuff keeps well, it is healthful, and we both like it.  We may have 100 pounds of squash stashed here and there (mostly there) by the time the season is over. 

  
  

  I keep the backstock of knives and battle axes and machetes and like that in my cabin.  I guess you might call that a hoard.  Right now, I have several hundred folding knives (everything from the three for $20 cheapie specials to a titanium-handled jobbie from Columbia River with a $124.50 suggested retail), over a dozen Oriental swords, two or three machetes, ten switchblades, and three revolvers.  But the guns aren’t for sale–not yet, anyway.

  
  

  Then there’s clothing.  Kathy and I both love bag sales–which reminds me, there is one tomorrow, woo hoo!  We probably have way more clothing than we really need.  I have around five silk shirts and two super-expensive Harris tweed sport coats.  (Ironically, I couldn’t afford this sort of stuff new when I was relatively rich.  Now that I am poor, I get it second-hand for next to nothing.)  I have more socks than I can fit into my sock drawer–most of them set me back 25 cents a pair.  Ditto with Jockey shorts, at fifty cents a pair.  And don’t get me started on t-shirts–between the cheap ones from the thrifts, and the free ones from the dumpster, I am like the Donald Trump of t-shirts (only with better hair).

  
  

  And Kathy doesn’t do bad in the clothing department herself, largely because she is a past master of the fine art of getting ten pounds of sugar in a five-pound bag.  When she starts taking her finds out of one of those brown paper grocery bags we use at the bag sales, it is kind of like watching one of those clown car acts in the circus–you know, where maybe a dozen clowns get out of a little bitty car.  I have lost count of how many pairs of Gloria Vanderbilt–we call’em Glorious Vanderbutt–jeans she has.

  
  

  Well, I could go on and on, but time’s a’wasting.  I want to get back to the cabin, check out my coin collection.

  • 5:16 pm
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