The Greatest Generation

Yesterday, I helped my dad with the task of cleaning out my uncle's house, following my uncle's death. This house is in the town where I grew up... the town where my parents still live. It's the house where my dad grew up, and I have a lot of memories of this place... visiting with Grandma and my uncle.

Hoarding seems to be a proud tradition in my family. My parents do it, my grandmother did it, and my uncle did it. This makes sense. My grandparents were adults during the Great Depression. Between the Depression and World War II, my grandparents understood first hand what it meant to make do with what you had, and to go without. Their years of sacrifice had a tremendous impact on ... well, on everything they did.

My grandmother saved everything. She was the original recycler - and far better at it than we are today. She wrote her grocery lists on the back sides of cereal boxes. She kept used bread wrappers and transformed them into woven seat cushions (Shown in this picture). She started cutting paper towels into thirds long before the manufacturers picked up on the idea of half-sheets. Even twist ties were kept, because "you never know when you might need one."

My uncle inherited these habits. Now at this point, I've got to digress a bit. You see, my uncle effectively lived with my grandparents for his entire life. He was in Germany during a two-year Army enlistment shortly after WWII, and he played minor league baseball in 1949 and 1950, but aside from those four years, he lived at home. He never married, and for as long as I've known him, he never had a job.

Well, that's not quite true. His job was to help take care of my grandparents. My grandfather was an alcoholic, and had several strokes. My only memories of my granddad were essentially of an infant in an old man's body. He could say a few slurred words, and could walk with a little help, but that was about the extent of his ability. My grandmother was a shut-in. I can count on one hand the number of times I saw her out of her house.

When my grandparents died, my uncle got everything... the house, any money, and the hoarding instinct. He picked up where my grandparents left off, with his own twist. He loved gardening, so he raised a lot of his own food, and unlike my grandmother, he would leave the house. He used to ride his bicycle all over town, and would pick up just about any little treasure he found. The house was full of mismatched gloves, lug nuts, tire balancing weights and other tidbits he found when riding around town.

Yesterday, while I helped my dad clean out the house, I saw the results of two generations worth of hoarding. We threw out two old sofas, two old televisions, three old living room chairs, and several hefty bags of trash. Among the items I tossed...

-Hundreds of twist ties. Enough that I couldn't fit them all into my hand.

-A stack of plastic food containers approximately three feet high. This isn't counting the lids... all of these items were interlocked.

-A hundred or so plastic forks, knives and spoons from Dairy Queen, Wendy's and so forth.

-A stack of tin can lids (yes, the LIDS) approximately six inches high.

-Dozens of tin cans of various sizes

-Hundreds of Kraft Singles cheese wrappers.

The list of crazy shit goes on and on, and I really didn't make much of a dent in my quest to help dad clean out the house. While I was cleaning, a few thoughts went through my head...

-How can anyone live like this?

-All of this stuff... two generations and literally a house full of stuff... the total accumulation of many lives... and it will all be reduced to a few select mementos for my uncle's surviving relatives. The rest will end up in the dump. Even the house will most likely be demolished, and the empty lot sold to someone else.

-But mostly, I was amazed at the frugality and ingenuity of my grandparents and uncle. They used scraps of newspaper, cardboard and scrap clothing to seal drafty windows. They ate canned meat because it didn't require refrigeration. They never had cable TV. The only real indulgence my uncle allowed himself was his art. He was a very accomplished painter. I got one of his oil paintings while I was helping my dad clean out the house, which is what you see here.

I look at how they lived, and I compare them to my generation, and my kids' generation. We're so soft. We don't understand what it's like to do without. If we need want something, we simply go out and get it. When we're done with things, we simply throw them away. If it's hot, we sit in the air-conditioned living room and watch Blu-Ray Movies on our HDTVs. If it's cold, we don't put on a sweater, we turn up the heat. I actually brought home the aforementioned bread-wrapper seat cushion... to remind myself of the sacrifices of those who came before us, and maybe to instill this into my kids.

My uncle was one of the last relics of a generation that understood sacrifice and ingenuity. I look at the people of his era, compare them to my generation, and stand in awe of them, and with a bit of contempt for my peers. I can't picture us being able to live without our cell phones, fashionable shoes and computers. When I compare us to them, it's like putting a bunch of marshmallows against an oak. Tom Brokaw had it right... these folks really were the greatest generation.