I can remember as a kid my father would look around the living room at the mass of newspapers, books, reading material that my mother had collected and accuse her of becoming like the Collyer brothers. There's a book about them now, two brothers that were compulsive hoarders, and when one died, after setting off one of his booby traps, the other brother, blind and paralyzed, died of hunger. Pretty grim story, huh? So their claim to fame was their fear to throw anything out. My mother would say, "as soon as you throw something out, you have a need for it" and that has proven true to me many times. A couple of years ago I threw out a pile of maps I had in the desk. You can always look up directions on Map Quest, I reasoned. Since then, I don't know how many times Timmy and I have gone looking for a map to see the general area of cities our guests are from. Map quest can get you there with accurate mileage, twists and turns but it doesn't visually show you the city's location in the state. Plus, to look it up on the computer, you have to go upstairs, turn on the computer, etc, etc. Opening a map was so easy.

There's another reason why people save things - it's just too costly to throw them out. Today, garbage collection is not cheap - so what is there to do but hang on things. When I was a kid, I was always afraid of the garbage men. They were a rough bunch, two or more of them, dirty, with ragged looking clothes, you wouldn't even want to make eye contact them. They rode on the back of the garbage truck, jumping off to pick up a garbage can and throw it into the truck. It seemed like every time they were in front of our house, they had to reposition the garbage, and a big plate of metal would nosily push the garbage to the front of the truck. My fear of garbage men probably goes back to when there was a "junk man". He collected rags and broken appliances and had a row of bells across the back of his truck that jingled when he drove by. A common threat parents used in those days was "be good, or we'll give you to the junk man". Tell that to Child Protective Services.

My mother once thought she killed the garbage man. My family bought wine in big gallon bottles, probably Gallo. (I was surprised when I found out you CAN buy smaller bottles of wine.) Anyway, Bucky had run out just before the garbage truck came, and put an empty big bottle of wine on the top of the pile. When the garbage man raised the can to throw it into the truck, the bottle came crashing down on his head. After falling to his knees, and screaming obscenities, he managed to get back on the truck and ride off. Maybe that's what happened to the Collyer brothers, they had been frightened by the garbage men and gave up putting it on the curb. Well, I have to get back to the Sunday New York Times. My living room is looking like the Collyer brothers are here.