Flash forward 16 plus years later and sure enough, the shop and the office are jam packed with all sorts of stuff that framebuilders accumulate : Lots of frames needing repairs that are abandoned, some day to be resurrected into rideable classics when the work load gets thin ,posters of bike racers and catalogues from bike component companies,bike magazines,jerseys-can't seem to part with them, even if the moths have eaten many holes in them......old frame drawing..on and on. In my sixteen years of occupying this space I had done a good job of filling every square inch of space and a bad job of throwing stuff out.
A few days ago the building superintendent came by and gave me a real surprise-my office was going away. The landlady was supposedly appropriating the 160 square foot office and stairwell for storage. I was to lose my universal catch-all space for all the stuff that wouldn't fit downstairs in the shop. My desk, computer , rollers , sales and tax records, shipping boxes and old musical gear would have to find a new home, most likely the recycling center at the county dump. The superintendent gave me all fo three days to re-arrange 16 years of accumulation. Saddled with this new unexpected task ,I was trying really hard not to be mad , sad and or sentimental. What I had to do was to get a lot of stuff organized downstairs and make room for whatever I felt was too essential to either give away or throw away.
With grim determination I began the task of looking through all the boxes and piles of stuff upstairs , trying to really not get too caught up in looking through memory lane and stay at the task of downsizing my substantial accumulation. Ignoring the stories in each box of stuff was pretty much impossible for me and I began to get sidetracked in looking at receipts for frames sold in years past , trying to remember the faces of the people who had ordered them. I came across names of people who have passed on, bike shops long out of business , prices that were so low that I wondered how I survived. I looked for a time at the old books but soon figured out that I could easily run out of valuable time spending the day looking at things I had ignored for over a decade. I came to the conclusion that placing the receipt books in a box and keeping to the task at hand was needed, although this sensibility did not come natural to me. I thought about all the years I had been building bikes and what all of this stuff represented to my personal history. After pondering this I had a moment of clarity, a kind of resignation that whatever value this mountian of stuff represented to me, most of it would have to go-personal history be damned.
I got in the mode of "Get rid of anything as long as it hasn't been useful in the last two years"......this amounted to nearly two truck loads. Lots of bike parts got donated to the local "Bike Church" self service bike co-op. A lot of metal got recycled-fancy US made aluminum tubing ,about the equivalent to $ 1,500 worth became $ 38.40 in recycle value. My oldest bike drawings, many of which were from the early '90's went into the dumpster . Old catalogues and magazines got recycled or went to friends. It was a blood-letting of personal accumulation like I had never had-more like something that should happen when someone dies, but I wasn't dead yet. Maybe it was the death of something else, the passing of my inability to cut loose of all the junk that I thought held my identity and told my story. I had the thought , who really cares about this junk anyway ? who wants to know in such rediculous detail the complete and unabridged archeological evidence of my time on earth ? If I had been ignoring it all these years , wouldn't it follow that even I couldn't be bothered to pay attention to it ? I started to feel pretty empty and started thinking in jest about leaving enough room in the dumpster for myself ! After all, nothing lasts forever.
Art, life and the great trash heap are all temporal. Letting go is good (or so I tell other people).
ReplyDeleteOn the upside, did you get a rent reduction for lost space?
Chin up good man. Stuff, as much pain as it brings to let go sometimes, is just stuff. All temporary, and only bring joy if they are being used for a memory giving experience. But ideas are all but impossible to kill. And you sir, have -and are - great ideas.
ReplyDeleteAre u serious....you recycled all that aluminum? How come you didn't give it to some of the budding frame builders out there? You're still a good guy but now you're gonna be in my doghouse for the next two months.
ReplyDeletePaul, you may remember a young slug who poked around your shop over a decade ago looking for bontrager tubing. For part of an afternoon you gave me access to that attic. What I found there changed my life. Now building full time in east bay...loving it. Rest easy knowing that your attic full of junk along with your generosity spawned a generation of builders...Muir, Hartman, Thayer and many others I don't know by name. Now we all have our own attics to deal with! A small price for what we get to do with our lives.
ReplyDeleteHey, anonymous......first of all, the aluminum I recycled was pretty corroded. second of all, anyone who asks can have access to my scrap anytime. Third of all , if I'm in your doghouse for two months, is there enough room in there for two mixing boards and some steerer tubes ? I still have stuff sitting outside my shop with nowhere to put it.
ReplyDeleteI was just kidding, mister. So often ppl forget the "re-use" in "reduce, re-use, and recycle". Always try to re-use before you recycle. I guess if it was corroded then nevermind. I didn't know you give away your scrap like that...not that I am talented enough to make a frame anyways. Hope all is well, sucks that you suddenly got evicted from your storage space.
ReplyDeleteIf you knew how much tubing still have , even after this episode you would probably think I didn't get rid of enough ! It's a long story how I got all this stuff.....There's a lot of unused material out there-folks just have to get connected to it. I once saw several pallets , about $ 40,000 of steel in back of Bontrager that was destined to get scrapped. Luckily, I don;t think it did.....but I don;t think any of it has gotten used yet after sitting over 12 years !
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