Cold Cash

Hoarding has become the norm for the past year during this COVID-19 season.

Eleven months ago I was living in Atlanta during the weekdays while finishing up the last week of my proton therapy treatments. At that time we had just started hearing about this new virus called COVID-19. There was all this talk about how to avoid it by “social distancing”. I remember how happy I was that in one week I would be finished with my treatments and could stay at home for a while. Little did I know how long I would be at home!!

We don’t have a Costco in our town, but we keep a card so when we are in Atlanta we can buy some supplies. Well, Cheryl had asked me to pick up a couple things at Costco. When I arrived at the Costco parking lot, I thought that they must have been having a giant sale or something because the parking lot was full of vehicles and people pushing buggies piled high with merchandise.

As I walked towards the door, I noticed that almost every buggy had some of the same things in them—toilet paper, paper towels, bottled water and cleaning supplies.  I went in Costco and could not believe the length of the checkout lines.  It was madness. Hoarding had begun.

I could probably be considered a hoarder for a lot of reasons, but I developed those traits long before the coronavirus. For example, I don’t like to throw away any building materials. I built a barn big enough to store lumber inside the barn. Among my lumber collection are some pieces of 100-year-old barn wood left over from using it on the walls of our home during the construction in 2007-08. There is also wood from many other construction projects over the years. I don’t like to go to town to buy a couple boards when I have a small project to do. Actually, the barn is full of other “jewels”.  Our granddaughter, Darby, is wired for organizing things. She has helped me organize my junk in the barn in the past, and recently she was in the barn but did not have time do her magic, so I am sure that my mess drove her crazy. Sorry, Darby!

COVID-19 season has not made my mother a hoarder. She grew up very poor without running water in their rundown house which was heated only by a fireplace and a pot-bellied stove. She says that she and her ten brothers and sisters were never hungry because they worked hard on the farm all summer growing food and canning and drying food for the winter. All my life my mother has hoarded food. Even today and living alone, she has two full-sized refrigerators and three (yes, THREE) full-sized freezers of food.

She may have hoarded food, but she did not keep other things around. I had one of the best baseball card collections you could dream of. I am talking about Whitey Ford, Micky Mantle, Bobby Richardson, Roberto Clemente, Willie Mays, Ernie Banks, Stan the Man, and my favorite Yogi Berra (I was a catcher). I had hundreds of cards. I had so many that I would give some to my friends, and we would clip a card on to the fender bracket of our bicycles with a wooden clothespin so it would make a sound with the spokes that we thought imitated a motorcycle. Once the card became worn, I would give them another one. I had plenty.

Well, those cards disappeared while I was away in college. My mother said to me, “Why would anybody want to keep old stinking baseball cards?” I wish that she had been a hoarder of things other than food.

For many years she did like to keep something else. Growing up we kidded her about a metal Folger’s can (the type that you used a metal “key” to roll around the top to remove it) she kept in one of her freezers. She had punched a slot in the top so she could drop coins in it. She paid no attention to our teasing about her money can. She would tell us that no burglar would ever think to look in her freezer for her “cold cash.”

Today that coffee can has a place of honor on our kitchen countertop so all our kids and grandkids will be reminded of the importance of saving money for emergencies and special needs.