Hoarding disorder is an ongoing difficulty throwing away or parting with possessions because you believe that you need to save them. —Mayo Clinic
Thanks for reading, and hello to you new subscribers. Today’s post has been on my mind the past few weeks, because I have moved again, to what is now my 11th home in California. That’s a lot of packing and schlepping. And like many of you, I wonder why on earth do I still hang onto certain things. I’m not counting books and magazines and vinyl, because those are seriously important artifacts, and most of that stuff still needs to come out of storage. I’m talking about the weirder detritus that I’ve clung to over the decades. I’ve opened box after box and thought, is there something wrong with me? Here are a few of the nuttiest items that I can’t seem to throw away. Please post your own versions in the comments.
Billy Carter Beer
America holds a long tradition of political figures with goofy, erratic, and unstable family members. Bill Clinton’s half-brother Roger, pardoned for cocaine possession and trafficking. Gerald Ford’s wife Betty, notorious alcoholic and founder of the Betty Ford Center. Kitty Dukakis, wife of presidential nominee Michael Dukakis, fond of booze and diet pills, briefly hospitalized after drinking rubbing alcohol. Ronald Reagan’s daughter Patti Davis, disowned by her mother for shacking up with Bernie Leadon of The Eagles, later posed “full frontal” for Playboy. And the Kennedy and Trump families—take your pick. During the Jimmy Carter administration, the president’s brother Billy struck a partnership to launch his own brand of Billy Beer. (He was a legendary boozer, but in private actually preferred Pabst.) When I was in high school, my older brother brought home a six-pack of this beer. We sampled one, but it wasn’t very good, and the rest sat untouched in the back of our family refrigerator. Many years later I put a few cans in my luggage and brought them to San Francisco. One exploded en route, but this can remains unopened. On the label it reads: “I had this beer brewed up just for me. I think it’s the best I ever tasted. And I've tasted a lot. I think you'll like it, too.—Billy Carter.” The beer ceased production in 1978, and not long thereafter Billy sought treatment and stopped drinking.
Joey Ramone Action Figure
This was given to me in the early 2000s, at a birthday party at Tommy’s Mexican Restaurant in San Francisco, a wonderful tequila emporium which also serves food but nobody ever remembers the food because it’s a tequila bar. I’m not a collectible action figure type of person, but many are, and their homes are lined with a terrifying amount of such items. What are they for? What do they do? They just sit there. Although it is nice to look up at it occasionally and think, “yeah, man, Joey Ramone.” What’s most astonishing is that out of all the crap listed here, this is by far the most valuable, and goes for up to $180 on eBay.
Czech Blowjob Sausage
In 2004 I traveled to Prague on assignment, and kept seeing this strange logo on storefronts. It seemed like a bizarrely sexual way to promote sausages, a well-groomed character drooling on a phallus. Sort of a homoerotic Weimer Republic kind of thing. After yet another sighting of this sign, I realized I had to own something with the graphic, if only to show others it actually existed. I walked into one of the shops and pointed to this can on the shelf. The counterperson kind of smirked, this probably happened quite a bit, and sold it to me. I’ve never opened it but you can still hear the sausages sloshing around inside. Kostelecké uzeniny a.s. is the largest meat processing company in the Czech Republic, established in 1917, and produces a wide range of beef and pork products, including sausages, hams, and smoked meats.
Covid Bullhorn
In June 2022 I was invited to officiate the wedding of an old friend in Idaho. I signed up for the Universal Life Church (my second stint), got the paperwork and the little “Clergy” badge, and flew to Boise. The morning of the wedding, I woke up woozy and feeling like someone had stuck a toilet brush down my throat. I did a Covid test and it was positive. I texted the results to my friend, who was hoping to just get married, not have his entire wedding party infected by the minister. He replied that’s fine, it’s an outdoor ceremony, “all we need is your signature.” I took an Uber to the location in downtown Boise, and everyone was waiting for me. The car dropped me off at the opposite corner, and I was late, so I had to run an entire block, sweating in a mask and suit. Someone handed me this bullhorn. I had so many clever remarks I could have said, but my brain was mush and I scrapped all of the jokes. We began, and I performed the fastest wedding ceremony in the history of Boise. I could remember only one line, and closed with “...with the power vested in me by the Universal Life Church, founded in a garage in Modesto, California, I now pronounce you man and wife.” I skipped the reception and party, went back to my hotel, and sat in my room. Now what? In that era, if you tested positive you were supposed to quarantine yourself for a week. I ordered room service and sat out on the balcony, feeling like a diseased pariah. There was no way I could stand being in this hotel for a full week. The next morning I put on a mask and went to the airport and took my seat and flew back to SFO, and probably infected a bunch of people. Anyway, Dag and Tamara are still happily married.
SuperMuff
This vintage magazine ad has hung in every bathroom of mine since the 1990s. It’s most noteworthy for the triple-pun trifecta of cheezy sex references: SuperMuff, the “QT” tone, and of course “Stacked and quietly waiting for you.” Carbon dating, or more accurately eBay, puts this at roughly 1975. Doug Thorley was apparently an early drag racer and hot rodder, and according to the internet hired a LOT of bikini models for various advertising campaigns. I still don’t know what a “header” actually does, something to do with mufflers and exhaust, but the company, founded in 1958, is still in business today.
San Francisco Toe Tag
I bought this item in the city’s Lower Haight district, back when it was bursting with Gen-X nightlife. I lived in the neighborhood, and amidst all of the bars, cafes, bookstores, hair salons and video shops, a tiny storefront was selling gruesome objects like human bones, bird skeletons, and mouse skulls. The usual morbidity of that era. I had never seen a toe tag before, so obviously I needed to have it. This probably dated from the 1950s or 1960s, given the mention of “A-bomb blast.”
Goldwater Salsa Letter
This letter arrived in 1994 from the granddaughters of Senator Barry Goldwater, pitching their food company and especially their new line of jarred salsas. It was addressed to Earl Woodruff, food critic of The Nose magazine, who was a retired Marine sergeant and kind of a cranky scatter-brain. Earl was a pseudonym, the invention of my friend Bill Bonham and myself. We would meet at his house and drink tons of coffee and talk in the voice of this crazy Marine, and write all sorts of food-related columns about smart drinks, various restaurants, and his ridiculous recipe for “Field Chili” which could feed an entire platoon. Woodruff was once invited to the James Beard Awards, but didn’t attend because of course he didn’t exist. The Goldwater salsas were eventually written up, and the review was mixed and mostly rambled on about Barry Goldwater being trounced by LBJ. We never heard from the granddaughters again. The company thrives to this day.
Postal Killer Cap
This Nose magazine swag was created to promote a cover story about the then-popular trend of American postal workers who snapped and shot up their workplace. Once the story was sent to design, we thought, we can’t let a good thing go to waste. What’s the logical next step? A postal killer cap. Grisly and tasteless, obviously, but it was the 1990s and we sold a lot of these. Over time, the cap assembly became a highly refined system, and went something like this: a young college student, often from an Ivy League school, would become an intern at the magazine. Their parents would swell with pride, thinking their child was gaining valuable experience in the exciting world of print journalism. Instead, the interns were told to walk down to a South of Market uniform shop and buy up all of the postal hats. (An employee once called up the Nose office and asked our receptionist Allison, why are you buying so many of these? Her reply: “We just need them.”) The intern would return to the Nose office, take each cap and burn a hole in it, then artfully decorate said “bullet hole” with red paint to simulate the splatter of blood. The hats would then be set on newspapers in the conference room, lined up to dry, and were then shipped to lucky customers. The Ivy League remains a vital introduction to the world of publishing.
Boulwarism Book
A few friends have sent me links over the years about the negotiation concept of Boulwarism, asking, “Are you related to this guy?” I didn’t know. Boulwarism was a hardnosed labor negotiation tactic of making a “take-it-or-leave-it” offer, with no further concessions or discussion. First popularized at General Electric in the 1950s, it’s now considered outdated, and in the context of collective bargaining, is seen as illegal. Eventually a high school friend mailed me this book, The Truth About Boulwarism: Trying to Do Right Voluntarily, published in 1969. I looked at the author photo, the receding hairline, the jowls, the shovel-head face, his origins in Kentucky, and yeah, it’s safe to say he’s probably a distant cousin. It’s the first book I’ve seen which actually boasts the family name. International Union of Electrical Workers president Paul Jennings once referred to Boulwarism as “telling the workers what they are entitled to and then trying to shove it down their throats.” Lemuel Boulware lived to the age of 95, and he and his wife left no immediate survivors. As Harper Lee once ventured, in To Kill a Mockingbird, you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family.
Don't look at it as hoarding. Look at it as "making sure everyone at your estate sale is extremely entertained." (That's my current goal, considering that my house decorating style is pretty much "proving that The Red Green Show and Doctor Who are really the same TV program.")
Perfectly legit ephemera, Jack!