Chapter 37: What are your favorite possessions? Why?
Originally written August 31, 2021
“To the hobos I’m imprisoned by everything I own...”
from “Magic Mirror” by Leon Russell
Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for the material things I have and there’s no way in Hell I’d ever give away all my comfortable, middle-class belongings and go join the hobos.
I mean damn, if I did start giving away my stuff, the fucking hobos probably would be first in line to take it.
And yet there is a big part of me that still tries to clings to the old zen hippie hitchhiker ethos of detachment when it comes to material things.
And remember what Elvis Costello sang: “Was it a millionaire who said `Imagine no possessions …’ ” That’s from this song below:
On the other hand there is a part of me that hangs on to weird old souvenirs.
I’ve got a huge cardboard box in my closet I half-seriously call my “archives,” that’s full of weird miscellany including old college papers, my kids’ report cards, old photos, newspaper clippings, old keychains, hand-scribbled attempts at novels and travelogues, matchbooks from the porno theater I worked at in college and other memorabilia I somehow couldn’t throw away.
I haven’t taken my archives box out of the closet for several years. But I know it’s in there.
Except for priceless sentimental things like family photos, artwork by kids and grandkids, etc., the possessions I like the most are things I utilize to make my life a little easier or a little more enjoyable.
This includes my most expensive belongings, namely my modest suburban house [Note from 2024: I paid off my mortgage last year!] and my little compact Chevrolet Spark; my array of electronics which includes my laptop, my iPhone, my tv, my Roku, my sound bar, my turntable, my Kindle Fire tablet; and my kitchen appliances (my Instant Pot, my coffee maker, even my quarter-century-old microwave oven).
Of course there are some belongings that have deeper value for me, more spiritual than utilitarian.
For instance, my modest collection of art. I’m lucky to own a Tommy Macaione original — a small painting of a sailboat off Puerto Vallarta. Tommy himself gave this to me back in the ‘80s. This after I “interviewed” him for a video he planned to send send as a “Christmas message” to President Reagan and Ayatollah Khomeini.
Tommy also gave a painting to my crony Alec, who served as videographer for this project and it’s practically identical to my Puerto Vallarta scene. I also have a Macaione print, autographed “to my good friend writer Terrell …”
I have a portrait of myself — in a grey-knit cowboy hat, smoking a pipe —painted by my friend Paul Milosevich when I agreed to be a model for one of his art classes back in the 1980s. (See photo at top of page).
On the Mother’s Day after after Paul gave it to me, I gave the painting to my mom. But when I moved Mom into my house a few years before she died, the portrait came with her. It’s still hanging in her old room.
I also have several prints of art by the likes of Frederico Vigil and Gilberto Guzman.
Among my art collection are several Mexican masks, which I began back in the early 1980s. My favorite is one that looks like a totem pole, with a turtle on top of a green face and a bat below his chin. I paid $20 or $25 in Juarez nearly 40 years ago. It was that one (at far left in photo below), that graced the cover of my cassette-only album Pandemonium Jukebox circa 1984 (and the back of my CD version of Picnic Time for Potatoheads).
My book collection not only reflects my unceasing quest for knowledge, my love of literature — and my mostly-repressed hoarder tendencies.
I’ve got old, yellowed, dog-eared paperbacks, some going back for more than 50 years. And I have over-stuffed book shelves in several rooms of my house.
Every couple of years or so I thin out my books, donating to the library or using for trade at used book stores. But such purges barely make a dent in this ever-expanding trove.
Then there’s my cherished music collection.
The first thing that anyone coming to my house the first time notices is my CD collection, spread among several shelves, cabinets and racks in my living room. I have hundreds of CDs. But the truth is, in the last 5-10 years, the vast majority of music I buy has been in the form of MP3s.
And while I’ve got who-knows-how-many self-burned CDs I have from those MP3s in who-knows-how-many notebook-style albums made for this purpose, the truth is that I stopped burning all my MP3s onto CDs years ago.
In addition to the ever-changing technology of music mediums in my lifetime — vinyl records to cassettes to CDs to MP3s to streaming, and for many, back to vinyl — my music collection has suffered some tremendous blows.
In the late 1970s, I made a stupid bet on a Super Bowl game and lost my entire collection of cassettes to my friend Joe. That hurt. Through the years I’d rebuild my tape collection (and ended any proclivity towards sports betting).
But after my most recent tape player conked out after the turn of the century, nearly all my cassettes are out in my garage in a slotted rack I’d bought for them sometime in the 90s.
But even worse came in the summer of 1980. My first wife and I were working as cooks at Brush Ranch up north of Pecos but we kept our apartment in Santa Fe. My vinyl album collection was kept in a long row on the floor of our bedroom.
Stupid.
I know.
But somehow, while we were gone, our waterbed sprang a leak. The floor was soaked and nearly all my albums were ruined.
Through the past several years I’ve slowly built up my vinyl collection, even though I didn’t even have a turntable for nearly 30 years, until Anton gave me one last Christmas. Still, that’s just a fraction of the number of LPs I lost.
For much of my life I considered myself a musician. And for about 35 years I considered my Guild guitar to be near the top of my list of my favorite possessions. I bought it back in 1981 not long before I recorded Picnic Time for Potatoheads. It was my favorite — and only — guitar and I played it at all my gigs, good or bad, used it to write songs, played it while pining for various women.
You know, all that stuff musicians do.
I even used it to play this obscure Hank Jr. song for an audience of only myself more than once:
However, a few years ago, the tendonitis in my left hand made it near impossible for me to play it.
A few years ago when Anton came to town for a visit I could barely pry that Guild away from him, while I hadn’t touched it for months. So I decided to give it to my son. It was a quick, impulsive decision and also an easy one. Why should I hang on to it and let it gather dust out of some misplaced sentimentality while Anton could be enjoying it?
As a coda to that anecdote, not long after I gave my guitar away, I bought a ukulele, which was easier on my tendonitis. I played it at several little gigs, mainly opening for Gregg Turner at Whoo’s Donuts.
But then I started suffering from trigger finger as well as numbness in my fingers, so there are easy uke chords I can’t even do anymore. So I have a lot less sentimental attachment to my uke than I did to my guitar.
Maybe I should give that uke to a hobo.
Here’s that Leon song:
