When I was a young guy and lived on Oak Park Avenue, there were four places in our house where stuff accumulated: the attic, my closet, the basement and the garage.
In the attic there were a half-dozen trunks scattered around the room, and there were many articles of clothing covered with plastic and hanging on a pipe that ran the length of the attic.
Among these articles of clothing were both my grandmother and mother’s wedding dresses and three tuxedos that hadn’t been worn in 20 years.
I never knew what was in the trunks because they were locked. Whenever I swept the attic, I was told not to move the trunks, and I followed those instructions to the letter.
I had the smallest bedroom in the house, and, therefore, the smallest closet. I had one corner for my things and the rest of the closet was used by my mother and grandmother to store their respective collections of coats, hats and shoes. Of course, they both had closets in their own bedrooms, but these were filled to capacity.
The basement was full of canned goods, magazines and tools.
The storeroom, which also doubled as an air raid shelter in the early ’50s, was overflowing with canned goods and filled water bottles, so if an atomic bomb was dropped on Chicago, and we happened to survive, we would have food and drink. The problem, as I saw it, was that if that happened, seven people would have food and water for only two weeks, but who was I to question the adults?
My grandmother had a collection of National Geographic magazines dating from the 1920s stored in the basement, and all they did was gather dust. She also kept a series of Matthew Brady books detailing Civil War battles and personages. They did not gather much dust because I would frequently read the text and study the pictures in these books.
On the south wall of the basement was a huge tool cabinet. My uncle Gene was a skilled handyman, so he had tools for every possible household repair. Many of these tools were in triplicate.
The garage was Gene’s domain for all of the years he lived with us and where he did the work that he loved, namely auto mechanics.
The half of the two-car garage that he used was filled with car repair stuff, and I am certain he had four of every tool he used.
After Gene died in 1961, his tools remained locked up in both the basement and the garage until the house was sold in 1972. Fortunately, the new owner was also a handyman and weekend auto mechanic, so we were pleased to give Gene’s tools to someone who would use them.
I believe that if a family lives in a place long enough, all kinds of stuff will accumulate.
We have lived in our current home for 36 years, and, yes, we have collected a lot of stuff, but at least we waited until our children moved to their own homes before we commandeered their respective closets.Â
John Stanger is a lifelong resident of Oak Park, a 1957 graduate of OPRF High School, married with three grown children and five grandchildren, and a retired English professor (Elmhurst College). Living two miles from where he grew up, he hasn’t gotten far in 75 years.