Savage Chickens by Doug Savage for October 02, 2015

In his later years, my father went to flea markets and bought some of the most useless stuff you can imagine. “It was a bargain,” he’d say. “But it doesn’t work, Dad.” “Then I’ll use it for parts,” he’d say. “Besides, it could be an antique worth something. Leave my stuff alone.” .(Dad grew up in the depth of The Depression, and had to leave grade school to work. And one of the things he did early on was go into the rich areas of the city to salvage trash items. It affected his entire outlook on life. As a family, we could not get anything new … it had to be previously used and “a bargain.” Or something that could be fixed to work.).Well, what he bought hardly got used for parts, and didn’t turn out valuable, just enshrined glorified Junque. It accumulated to take over the basement and garage, and drove my mother crazy. Dad would look at it in after he retired, and got satisfaction in merely possessing it. It was sweet, but sad..When they moved, there was no place in their condo for much of it, so they had three huge garage sales and people bought the useless stuff (way below what Dad payed for it) and I eventually saw it back in the flea market at marked-up prices. I had lived with my Dad a while, and was now back home..Doubtless some other poor soul would buy it. I thought of it as “The Circle of Useless Crap.” How ironic, if some of it would actually turn out to be valuable. I half expect to see it someday on “Antique Roadshow.”