Among the items we cleaned out of my Dad’s minivan yesterday
- 6+ decks of cards
- 2 board games
- a full-sized cooler full to the brim with soda and melted ice
- several long (3+ feet) pieces of metal pipe
- some sort of rusty vise/clamp on a long metal pipe
- lots of rusty metal tools
- a few pounds of loose dirt (?)
- tire chains
- a felt flag on a flagpole
- a framed watercolor painting with glass (approximately 4 feet x 18″)
- 25-30 cassette tapes
- 25+ DVDs
- thousands of rubber bands
- lip gloss
- a giant bag of assorted candy
- many many pens
- a used Starbucks cup
- Mexican Train Dominoes
- 2 non-working cell phones and various accessories for them
- stacks of legal documents
- a hearing aid box and manual (but not for the hearing aids he had in when he died)
- 8 black vests of the kind worn by restaurant servers (brand new)
- 4 bottles of sunscreen‎
There was way more than that even, that’s just what I remember today. It was impressive. I bet my brother that the minivan gets 20 more miles to the gallon now that it’s all cleaned out. Well over 150 pounds of stuff in there. The back tires are completely bald on the outside edge. But it’s going to be a perfect set of wheels for my brother…he’s a surfer and works construction.
20 years ago (it’s an old 1980-something Honda Odyssey) my Dad drove up to San Francisco in it and came by my apartment to pick me up. I noticed a slight bad smell and asked what it was.
“Oh, huh? I don’t know, I don’t smell anything.”
I looked all around and found a cheeseburger with one bite out of it under the passenger seat. My Dad didn’t know anything about it.