OVERSTUFFED
This afternoon my wife and I will trek 34 miles down the Cowpath of Doom to Rutland, tempted by the Ethnic Festival. Along the way, unless predicted rain overwhelms them, yard and tag and lawn and garage and moving sales will thrust out at us, a cautionary gauntlet before we reach the Sidewalk Sales along Center Street and Merchants Row.
If I had to chose a single word to describe both America and Americans, it would be “overstuffed.” Coming from a family in which the Depression was still a haunting spectre, and married to a woman who was actually born during the Depression, the spectacles of a society where having is replacing doing continue to amaze me.
I’m old enough to remember when the Marche aux Puces was something we learned about in French class: the Flea Market in Paris, home to stalls at which you could find treasures among the gewgaws and knickknacks, especially among the booksellers. Then the idea of the flea market took on a more itinerant American form, in which someone would rent spaces for sellers of all descriptions to assemble on a given day and thus attract more buyers. This built on a well-established business practice of co-locating competitors, something I grasped on a trip to New York City where my group happened to park (that will tell you it’s been awhile) on a street lined with the shops of antique dealers. Together, they constituted an antiques district, something that collectors, if not the general public, would know. Downtown Rutland’s struggle, like that of downtowns all over Vermont, is how to attract people through diversity AND uniformity, a problem that seems to be solved again and again by appealing to upscale buyers.
To continue with the personal history lesson, flea markets soon fragmented, in this individualistic nation, into home-based sales. At first, most were classic American “something going on the side” activities: attempts to raise a little money by unloading what wasn’t truly needed, or even do a little dealing.
Then yard sales shifted gears into something higher. People started holding them just to get stuff out of the house and maybe have a little fun meeting people while doing it. Knowledgeable yard sailors know that moving sales are the best bet, especially late in the day.
Unless the same things go into a free pile. This relatively new development, appearing only in the last decade, has taken the overstuffed situation to a new phase. A somewhat later version of this involves the appearance of roadside furniture, free for the taking, no “free” sign necessary because everyone understands that’s why it’s there.
When I see some apparently excellent bureau marooned on someone’s lawn in this way, I can’t help but think of the joke that was passed around during one of Addison County’s agricultural downcycles. A farmer, exasperated by calf prices so low that they didn’t justify the expense of hauling and auctioning, tethered a calf one afternoon at the end of his driveway with a sign near it saying “FREE.” The next morning he came down and found two calves.
“Stuff, stuff, stuff,” remarked my wife, sitting on what has become known as her besk—the bed being the only place left with enough horizontal space to sort papers. Newspapers and magazines publish cartoons and comic strips that attempt to cash in one the humorous side of stuff, “experts” on the effective habits of personal personnel management offer workshops on how to overcome the cluttering habit, storage units proliferate on the landscape like yesteryear’s chicken coops, and mailboxes tilt from their loads of catalogs and credit card applications.
“This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace/ That inward breaks and shows no cause without/ Why the man dies,” remarks Shakespeare’s Hamlet, speaking of a pointless war over worthless territory between Norway and Poland. Literally, an imposthume was an abscess; figuratively, if the metaphor fits, beware it.
The most sensible response I’ve seen to a situation where used clothing has become essentially worthless and hand-me-down toys are shunned and every elementary school has a huge box of orphaned winter clothing and thrift shops have become major sources of financial aid for college-bound students etc. etc. was the time someone organized a drive—the Borkmans in Brandon were involved--to fill a shipping container with excess stuff and send it to the Third World. Never underestimate poverty’s creativity. I remember seeing one Internet picture from the Darfur in which American feedsacks had been layered over a woven stick frame to create a refugee camp roof. Not much of an advertisement for this country’s generosity, but at least they had a roof over their heads instead of being out in the blowing dust.
Standardized shipping containers, piled onto freighters and trains by the hundreds to move all kinds of goods everywhere in the world, are one of the most plausible ways that a terrorist weapon of mass destruction might successfully enter this country. I suggest that if we set up a counterflow of shipping containers filled with things we don’t need any more, or want others to have as well, we will have our best chance of keeping the terrorist kind from arriving.
Reflections, redundancies, and reiterations can be sent to [email protected]
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