I just went through the second-to-last box (this one is actually a laundry basket) of crap from the living room. I found some wonderful, amazing stuff.

My scanner is at the bottom of a whole ’nother heap of crap that I’ll have to go through soon, so I can’t really document this all, but I’d like to. It’s the thought that counts, right? Right.

I found a yearbook from my father’s dormitory from his sophomore year at Ohio State (1963–64). It was so easy to pick him out of the pictures; even then, he was a head taller than everyone else. I scanned the rest of the names, but the only other one I knew was John Butz, who I recognized at once and who is still one of my dad’s best friends. They were each best man at the other’s wedding, if I recall correctly.

I was deeply into this yearbook (I mean, who makes a yearbook for their dorm? It was surreal). So much of it was cemented in history. It could have been from no other year. The flashback photos were about President Kennedy and the Beatles. There were photos of the nice black ladies who cleaned their rooms (maid service in a dorm, can you imagine?). There were pictures of the dorm’s dozen or so representatives on the Ohio State football team, guys who probably stood a fair chance at the NFL in the ’64–’67 drafts, if things worked that way back then. There were pictures of the dorm’s fifteen or so ROTC cadets, guys who certainly went to Vietnam.

I looked at those guys’ pictures for a long time.

And on the last page, a full-page letter of thanks and a photo and signature from my dad, who had apparently orchestrated the whole idea of a yearbook for the hall. I could just burst. The dorm must still be there, or a new building with the same name must; it was too large, and at too large a school, to really go away (big state schools always have massive all-male dorms, right?). I wonder if they still do this yearbook thing. Which my dad apparently started.

I spent a while reading an issue of Time magazine from 1986, which we saved because it was the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty. I thought I was reading it for the ads. Electric typewriters. Multiple brands of electric typewriters. MCI versus AT&T for business long distance. The Charlie Chaplin campaign for IBM PCs.

An article in the back told the (until recently) eternal story of a Red Sox “hope” year (which 1986 certainly was). There was a photo of Tom Seaver, 41-year-old hall-of-fame pitcher new to Boston, with his tall young protege, a twenty-three-year-old, very promising Roger Clemens.

There were letters in the front about the pro-life/pro-choice debate, letters that could have been written yesterday. There was an article about Chernobyl, a recent event. One about Barber Conable, the president of the World Bank (a name that would have meant nothing to me just a couple of years ago). A long one about South Africa, still under apartheid. It’s shameful how far we’ve come in some ways in nineteen years and how we’ve backpedaled or stalled in others.

On a lighter note, in the basket were at least three photos of the “old man” cactus in my grandmother’s front yard in Sun City, Arizona. One from the late ’70s, when it was about as tall as her shoulder. One from the early ’80s, when it was an inch over her head. And one from 1989, just a year or two before the (extremely valuable) cactus was stolen out of her yard, when it was at least six and a half feet tall. My grandmother’s face and hair and body change in the pictures, too, but the way that cactus grew was a point of such pride with her that she stood straight and tall for every one of them.

It’s impossible to put into words how this stuff always makes me feel. I can’t believe my mother doesn’t understand why I save things.