Archaeology

We're making slow but steady work on Tom's apartment - consisting of equal parts collections (guns, knives, baseball caps, trains, slot cars, and a few other smaller groupings), the day-to-day things we all have (clothes, kitchenware, household furnishings, entertainment), and the things Tom has chosen to hold on to - which bordered on, but did not quite cross the line into, hoarding.

In some ways, it's like an archaeological dig - thinking of the ruins of the ancient city of Troy, which is actually many cities, in strata; the Troy of Homer's story is most likely Troy VIIa. So we're finding stuff that Tom stashed away years or decades ago, that have been mostly untouched ever since.

For instance, we found this wooden wine box of cassette tapes. Not sure how common using a wine gift / promo box for cassettes across the culture, but I worked in a package store in college; all my friends used them, I used them, and it spread to family, I have no doubt I gave this particular box to Tom.

Also interesting is the mix of purchased cassettes and recorded cassettes - a typical vinyl LP (two sides) would just fit on one side of a 90 minute cassette (45 minutes) so one would either put two albums from one group on a cassette or mix / match. Occasionally an album would be too long (so you'd either manually remove a song from the tape, or let the thing play out and cut off the last song) - later in the tape evolution 100 minute tapes were common, adding 5 minutes per side.

We ended up tossing the home-made tapes (except for a tape of The Nields first two albums, which I recognize as something I made for Tom), and selling his CD collection (again, I grabbed four Nields CDs), his albums and turntable, and the purchased cassettes for $200.

Note the real milk crate to store the albums in; back in the days before companies started to make plastic crates that would actually fit an album. Back in the say these things doubled as end tables, chairs, shelving supports, cable bins (for musicians). And of course, holding (and over time, warping) vinyl albums.