I made it back to Ashikaga unscathed late last night, and I am back at work this morning. What a trooper I am.
My 3 weekish long moment spent in the US was most excellent, short but very sweet. I enjoyed a bit of time with lots of friends and family. I did a bit of domestic traveling as well, setting foot in 6 different states.
One little memory that stands out is hanging out with some college buddies in Wisconsin at my friend Zeke's house. We actually woke up before noon on a weekend, so we figured it would be fun to go to a garage sale. In the Wisconsin area they are frequently called rummage sales, which we like to joke about.
My friend Seago has a fancy smart phone with GPS, which takes out most of the hard work involved in garage sales. We simply mapped out an address and followed the little blue dot. He hit a few mostly uneventful sales until we came across a big one, an estate sale. It feels horrible to admit, but I love estate sales. The stuff for sale is usually cooler, older, and cheaper than at a normal garage. Seago got a nice reel to reel player that folds up into its own little carrying case for 2 dollars. We later sat and listened to recordings taken from American Bandstand. There was enough thin brown tape in this little metal reel to wrap around a house once or twice, and we only had one spool, which meant a big messy pile of magnetic tape was left on the floor after listening. I snagged a betamax player for free, which contained part of The Parent Trap taped from TV. The best part were the old school commercials. One was Bill Cosby gibbering about his Jell-O Pudding Pops, straight out of the way things used to be.
We got to walk around this house and search for treasures as we wished. As we followed a nice lady through her deceased relative's house, I spotted a smallish movie film canister sitting on a washer or dryer. Already on the lookout for media to feed to Seago's machine, I took a closer look. The label was handwritten in German and was dated 1944. The only word that I could understand was Dresden, the name of a German city I only recognize because of the thorough bombing it received in World War II. I brought the subject up several times with the woman during my rummaging but she insisted that it wasn't for sale. What a find! I love estate sales. Does that make me a bad guy?
My poor laptop went inoperable during my time home, leaving me unable to put together anything here about the million things that I have been doing (tear). All of my pictures are still trapped on my digital camera. It's the worst! Hopefully it will be taken care of soon. Until then, I am forced to appeal to your imaginations with mispelled words instead of colorful photographs (unthinkable, I know).
No comments:
Post a Comment