Inheritances

A new chapter. An embarking. Where did this begin? Many places, so I will just pick one, and perhaps eventually get them all.

It began in 1999 or so with an early Saturday morning drive down to Northeast Baltimore. Our goal was to make a dent in the task of cleaning out Lillian Zahradka's rowhome. Ah, but that leads me to an earlier beginning.

My father got a phone call a few years earlier from a high school buddy; a friend needed some lawerly help. The friend, Lillian was a widow these 30 or more years, and wanted to arrange her estate. She, wanted to put her estate in order so that when she passed, there would be no troubles. Lillian had one daughter, a middle-aged woman who was also named Lillian; I think that might have been more common a generation ago. Or maybe just in Czechoslovakia.

Dad got to know them preparing the estate. He got a phone call a year later, "Lillian has died." Well at least she had her affairs in order.

"No, the daughter." Lillian's daughter had died single and childless. Having been single for her entire life, the daughter had kept much of her stuff in Lillian's house.

Lillian was wholly unprepared to lose her daughter also. Lillian's husband and daughter, judging from their stuff, were two of a kind. Both had lots of hobbies which involved acquiring lots of stuff. The husband liked to work on things, and never met a tool he didn't need to buy three of. The daughter liked to travel, paint, listen to music, and collected books, albums, and supplies sufficient to stock a store for each. As a result of both losses, the house was choked with the stuff of two lives, and poor Lillian made her way in the little spaces that remained. And enough time had passed, Lillian was ready to get rid of some of it.

And boy, how much of "it" there was. Our goal today was to clear out the basement. We spent hours trucking box after box of moldy books, clothes, suitcases, grimy coffee cans of old engine parts, empty bottles up the back stairs and into the alley. Most people will do this more than once over the course of their life. The sifting that comes after death. It can be the heart-wrenching cleaning of a child's room, or the vaguely reverent straightening up after a deceased tenant. I have nothing new to observe on that process. It is a mournful task, but infused with the curious "what's this?" of an archaeological dig. With the added bonus here of being incredibly filthy. We wore masks.

Here, then, is the beginning I mentioned earlier. The daughter had a *massive* vinyl collection. Now, on first seeing the wall of shelves, holding nothing but row after row of L.P.s, my thought was shamefully avaricious. I had heard of discoveries of old albums worth a fortune. Black gold. Texas . . . wax. Surely there were nuggets of it in this mountain of music.

Alas, the reality of collectibles is thus; just because something is old, doesn't mean it's worth any more. Rarities are so valuable because they are rare. As in, not many people collect them in the first place. The daughter's collection, if eclectic and vast, was very pedestrian. Lots of K-tel "best of" albums. Hundreds (I am not exaggerating; more than 200) of records, unopened and still in their original plastic, with the K-mart $1.98 price tag on them. It seemed likely the purchaser was a little compulsive in her collecting. Compulsive + non-discriminating = clutter.

I was no music expert, but I could tell there was nothing in the way of "value" to these records. Maybe he had some cachet in the day, but who would actually pay anything for a Ravi Shankar record now?

Throwing someone else's stuff away is hard work. It has all the metaphysical guilt of getting rid of something that still has value (it works!), without the psychological triumph of overcoming your own packrat tendencies. What a shame any of this stuff was ever bought, when it never got used.

As we carried stacks of records to the alley, I saw albums I recognized. Alice's Restaurant (was that album before the movie? because this one had a picture of Arlo from the movie on the cover). American Pie. Aqualung. Maybe she sorted that shelf alphabetically...

So I started setting a few aside. I guess that, then, was the real beginning. I had seen trailers for "High Fidelity". I knew an easy way to make a movie character look *really* cool was to give him a record collection, and make sure he was seeking that one good vinyl album. I guess I bought into that notion.

There were some Jazz albums. Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis. Hey, if I'm going to fall victim to a media myth, why not go all the way? Some '20s stuff. Count Basie, ha! Paul Williams, Bob Dylan, Joe Jackson, John Denver. The soundtrack to "Shaft".

Now, please understand, this was not me taking advantage of Lillian. She was old, and tired, and alone, and had probably not been in the basement in a decade, let alone the time since her daughter had passed. Throwing this stuff away was a kindness. It was interesting in a sociological way how the neighbors were starting to pour over the pile of detritus in the alley. There was so much of it, we actually had to bribe the city garbage truck that came by to take it. After they muttered about a maximum load, Dad slipped them a $20 as a "dumping" fee.

So I honestly felt I was not in the wrong to save a few out for myself. Months earlier, actually, Lillian had invited my wife and I to go through the collection of art books and supplies, and insisted we take anything we want.

"It is all just worthless to me." I showed Lillian the pile, and she patted my arm. "Good for you" sounds so cute with a thick Czech accent. So out to the van went my stack of albums. Back to my Real Estate Office, on the floor next to my desk. They were *way* too dirty to take home.

There they sat, until the Real Estate Office closed. They consolidated offices to a new location. Dad owned the building, so I left the pile albums there with the old furniture.

When he re-leased the office, I moved them upstairs into a corner of my sister's apartment.

When she married and moved out, I finally brought them to my house. The shuffling around had wiped some of the dust off. They went into a box, and sat on the shelf.

Lillian got older, sicker, and moved into a hospice facility. I went with my Dad once, and sat with her. She was no longer talking, didn't open her eyes any more. When Dad would hold her hand, and softly stroke her fingers, she would smile.

Once in a while, I would notice the pile of records, usually when we were moving things on the shelf around. I would feel anthropomorphic guilt for treating them so poorly. They were stacked flat, on their side, which I know isn't good for them. But I would remind myself I was not crazy, and albums had no feelings.

Once, to test out an old turn table someone gave us, I pulled out Alice's Restaurant. The turntable worked. But the album I had only contained the short version of "I Don't Want a Pickle", bummer. Growing up, a buddy of mine had the loonnngggg version on a reel-to-reel tape I'd heard once.

Otherwise, they sat there. Every couple of years, I'd pull out a couple that I thought might be worth some money, and check eBay to see if it'd be worth selling them off. I could get maybe $5 for "Crossings"! But I'd have to describe the condition of the album. Which means, morally, I would need to play it. Ah, never mind, I didn't have time.

Lillian passed away. Dad did the estate. After bills were paid and assets liquidated, there was a second cousin, or perhaps a grand-nephew, in Europe who was finally determined to be the nearest living relative.

There was a period of time I toyed with the notion of ripping them all to .mp3s. Check out super-bad John, and his vinyl-to-mp3 collection! Who was I kidding? No time.

We cleaned our basement, and threw away the stereo with the record player. Well, moved it into the garage, out of the way, staged to be really, truly thrown away later.

I moved the stack of records to my office. Again. I mean, different office, but, you know. If I worked up the urge for the final break up, out they'd go.

And a month ago, on a whim, I brought the stereo/record player to work. This morning, I finally brought the speakers in. Set it up (kind of hidden by my desk; the speakers were the big cabinet-sized ones from the '80s. In my daughter's room long enough to go native, they had been painted with butterflies and ladybugs). And pulled an album out.

Mrs. Zahradka, I am going to listen to every one of these, at least once. The ones I really don't want, I'm sorry, they're just going to get thrown away. But I spend most of my days at work just typing in the silence, and so listening to these records, even just the once to make them not completely useless, will in no way burden me.

First up, Cat Stevens, "Teaser and the Firecat".