“There’s a bulge in the living room ceiling! We have to clean out the attic,” I told the family. “Clean out the attic? There’s nothing up there but fond memories and keepsakes!” they protested.
“You’ll remember, last fall we found the storm windows under a pile of fond memories and when we dug out the Christmas ornaments, they’d been crushed by 100 pounds of keepsakes. The junk has to go!”
So the six of us climbed up into the upper reaches with leaf bags and boxes and a great deal of resolve. “We must be brutal about this,” I said. “We have to put aside sentimental nonsense.”
“You can count on us to the end, Dad,” they shouted. The end came about ten minutes later when the first Barbie doll turned up. Soon everyone was busy album-flipping, toy-winding, clothes-modeling and hula-hooping.
“Get a grip on yourselves!” I shouted. “You’ve got to let go of the past and toss out these foolish mementos.” I was actually getting through to them. They’d put aside the Parcheesi game and paid attention, but then the effect was ruined when my roller skates slipped out from under me and I dropped my Mickey Mouse jelly glasses.
“You should be setting a better example,” my wife Barbara said. “You’ve got as much junk up here as the children.”
“Junk? These are perfectly good roller skates. I might need them if there’s another bus drivers strike.”
“What about these science books you bought at a garage sale years ago? I know you haven’t read them.”
“I definitely intend to, but first I have to learn German. Please give me a chance!”
We invented a voting system to decide on the heave-ho items. The majority would rule, but each of us had one veto vote to save a cherished item. After three hours of rummaging and voting we’d tossed four wire coat hangers and a questionable bicycle pump. I’d used my veto vote to save my ukulele. “Such a fine old instrument,” I said, caressing its frets.
“Dad, how can you call it a ‘fine old instrument,'” Steven asked. “It’s made of plastic and has a picture of Donald Duck on it.”
“And you never really played it,” Janis added… “You just made funny noises with it,” Carolyn recalled… “Over and over and over,” Denise added.
“Those were chords,” I protested. “I was on the verge of playing ‘Billy Boy,’ I might have eventually made it to Carnegie Hall.”
“We might have rented Carnegie Hall just to get you and that fiddle out of the house for awhile,” Barbara said.
That did it. I offered to toss the uke if everyone else would make a similar sacrifice. The white elephants began to march out to the curb and there was room enough in the attic to swing a dead cat. Thank goodness we didn’t find one.
Six a.m. the next morning I was awakened by strange sounds outside. I saw the garbage truck out there and, perched on our broken rocking chair, stroking the ukulele, the dreamy-eyed driver was playing a familiar tune.
I opened the window and shouted, “By George, you’ve got it! I’m sure you’ve got it! O-ho where have you been, Billy Boy, Billy Boy?”
Imagine That 