Deep Clean and Great Finds

I’ve been hauling this file cabinet around the country since at least 1997. Though I think I got it earlier because I sort of remember it standing on the porch in our last apartment in Chicago. I can picture it everywhere I’ve lived, like the Tardis from Doctor Who. Like the Tardis, it also seems bigger on the inside than the outside. I’ve put stuff in it all those years and don’t remember ever taking anything out.

Well, sometimes I’d go through the bulging “warranties” drawer and see what technology or appliances we no longer own. At some point I ditched the documents for buying my first house in 1999 (sold in 2001).

But now I need those drawers to be “working” and not just storage. So I’m going through it ruthlessly and tossing not just the manual for that zip drive and restore disks for my first laptop (circa 2004 thinkpad). I had half a drawer of maps. Maps! And books and brochures detailing hikes. Because I always thought I’d go back, maybe, to one of those places in Virginia or Montana or California or Nevada. If I do, I can get a new map.

I’m not getting rid of my map of Eastern Europe, which I bought for a class on Eastern European history and culture in 1985. I spent some time with it this morning, this time looking at places that are no longer places and at immigration routes from Turkey and Greece toward Europe (never toward Russia…)

But the greatest find of the day was a manila envelope marked “Reading Cartoons.” In it was a large packet of pages from the Chicago Tribune comic strip my mother used to teach me to read. It was a phonics program, back in the late 1960s. The color pages were for Sunday. And page one was, no surprise to me, the letter “h.”

And here he is, Harry, the subject of the title poem of my book H is for Harry. Just like I remember him.

Here are a few others. I like this tricky one: “ide” that ends with “cried” to show how the language can throw you off in a minute!

And of course I like this one for “ink” that starts with Sink! Must have been a Sunday because it’s in color.

I think “mink” was a more useful word in 1967 than it is today. Maybe. Ink pots had already disappeared by then of course, too. Here is part of the “instructions” for parents on the back of the first cartoon. It was a full page of telling parents how to encourage and build the self esteem of their children, especially those who have trouble reading (hint: it’s because they’re gifted).