Cleaning House and Enjoying It: Another Midwest Musing

 
Today I cleaned my office. Since the pandemic hit, it has gotten dustier and more cluttered than I usually let it get. Books on the floor. Notebooks leaning again the baseboard. CDs strewn across the desk. Yikes!

So today was the time to bring some order to this space where I spend so much time. It is a lovely place to be -- up on the second floor of our house, looking out over the woods that overlooks the prairie. And when it's neater and cleaner, I enjoy it more because I am sort of a neat freak. 

What I enjoyed most, though, beside the lack of dust and newly restored order, was looking over the eclectic collection that fills this room.

There are the books, of course, as evidenced by the photos. And some of them are ones I didn't write. Ha. There are books of poetry, humor, history, theology, fiction, comic books (old -- and I mean old! -- Mad magazines and DC comics), and more. 

There's a whole collection of ancient Wittenburg Doors. There's a whole section of shelves containing autographed books by friends and authors I've met over the years. 

But the shelves also hold a bottles of Winomycin Elixir (looks a lot like Sutter Home Chardonnay) prescribed to me by my late friend Dr. Phil Ball and some wild Guatemalan booze sent by Donna Higgins Smith. There's my collection of "Jesus Junk" ("Jeez-It's" sticky notes, "Messiah Mints -- Save Your Breath", etc.) and Quaker Crap (Fighting Quaker Puppet, Quaker Boy Moose Mate Call, Old Quaker Wiskey, and so on), along with assorted other goofy things. And memorabilia from my misspent youth in Columbus, Ohio. Oh, and a screaming flying monkey that soars across the room. 

Sitting on the shelves are various Snoopys, models I've built of British sportscars (including a replica of the 1966 Austin-Healey Sprite I once owned), awards I've won exhibiting my 1955 MGTF 1500 at various car shows, and old cameras -- including my dad's 35mm Vivitar and its lenses. Unlikely for a Quaker, there are also old cast iron tanks, a cannon, and a grenade cigarette light -- relics of time I spent with my beloved great-uncle Johnny Clemmens. Some of his Army medals hang on a wall.

The walls are covered with all sorts of photos and certificates. The old Ohio title to the MG from when 

dad gave it to me, a leaf from an early 17th John Bill Bible (a printer relative of mine), a 1973 National Lampoon Map of the World (very unpollitically correct, framed book covers, a painting of Quaker Mary Dyer by my friend Lil Copan. 

In the corner, tucked alongside two file cabinets topped by my dad's old chart chest, is my desk. I had it made almost 20 years ago and still love its aging oak patina. It hold my large format photo printer, laser printer, scanner, stereo speakers and computer. It's where I do almost all of my writing and thinking. 

When I was a kid growing up in Columbus, I dreamt of being a writer and having a space like this. I also was intrigued by the collections various adults in my life had -- Dad and his stuff, including fake business cards that said things such as "If I give you a going away present, will you go away?", Uncle Johnny and his model tanks and record collections, Mom and her books and boxes of family photos. For the past almost 20 years, I've been lucky to have had the writing space I always dreamed of and a place to put my weird collection of stuff. It's been a haven -- a little bit of normal (or abnormal in my case) -- in this scary, dangerous time. 

And a place to further reinforce their grandfather's craziness to my grandchildren. Though they do seem to enjoy playing with the toy cars, Woodstock and Snoopy, the marshmallow shooting air gun, et al. 

"See you 'round like a donut," they say when they leave. Wonder where they got that?