Who's the Crazy One?

We were back at Leo’s farm today and I laughed so much I had tears running down my face. Unfortunately, I was the only one laughing and I did it alone in a bedroom stacked with a lifetime of junkmail, newspapers, magazines, letters, and survival gear.

First off, mom told Aunt Julie not to rent a dumpster. This house has been in the family since 1900 and nothing has ever been thrown away. The mice have gone crazy and chewed on almost everything. Leo had subscribed to all these survival magazines and had about 100 one gallon cans of dehydrated food. Also still there was every church bulletin dating back to when the church was in German in the 1920’s. Sears catalogs, we got ‘em. There are clothes with Leo’s grandfather’s name in them.

Uncle Bud was supposed to start a burn pile. He searched for matches for three hours and the fire was never lit. Then we found out you need a burn permit.

We are attempting to clear this house room by room. But where do we put the trash? The kitchen and living room are now stacked to the ceiling with bags of trash. Luckily, Allen came over again today and took some treasures. He brought his son, the 15 year old who found Leo dead. They are strong, hard workers. They loaded his truck so full that they had to put the tailgate down to put some more bags of 20 year old seed on board. (see picture)

Mom was working in the pantry (where you can smell there’s a dead animal) and keeps handing Allen more and more crap. He finally said no when she tried to give him a 1963 calendar. She used the plea, “That’s the year JFK died.” Yep, that made the calendar valuable. He wouldn’t take it; now it’s back on the wall.

This family has a knack of hanging calendars on top of one another, so when you remove 1963, you’ll find 1962 and so on. The stack behind 1963 goes back to 1945. I know some of you think I make this stuff up, but I’ll take pictures.

Mom and Uncle Bud worked all day moving junk that was heaped on the kitchen table. I came down carrying my 15th box of Publishers’ Clearinghouse propaganda and told them how remarkable it was. Then I looked at the stove and realized they had moved the junk from the table to the stove. Now the stove that was previously cleared is heaped with crap.

They next moved on to dumping canning jars full of unidentified stuff from decades ago. Allen had to open one of the jars of pickles, which they had previously tried to convince him to take home for dinner, and the stink was mind blowing, it leaked onto his clothing and made him very unappealing. Then they found that there are about 50 antique canning jars full of lard. Lard just doesn’t pour out into the hole they dug, but the jars need to be saved. I had to walk away while this discussion was going on.

Allen’s wife said they will not eat the survivalist goods, because it is 15-20 years old, but would feed it to their chickens. There was one case of dehydrated chicken, I thought that was funny, chicken cannibalism. Hopefully, we don’t have a barnyard full of dead chickens tomorrow. He also wants to burn the 20 year old corn seeds in his pellet stove to heat his house. I questioned whether this was a good idea as the seeds are coated in fertilizer and insecticide. He looked at me like I was the crazy one.