Hoarding in the Hamptons
I realized, very young, that my family did things a little, well, differently. We didn’t burn bridges. We didn’t even close doors that well. Take houses, for instance – actually don’t take them, just repurpose them. Once my father bought the old church in Pleasant Grove, right down from Charco Broilers, where the big bull was up on the roof of the building, and moved it out to the no man’s land between Seagoville and Combine (to use as a house), we didn’t get rid of the single wide trailer home with the bronze appliances and the midcentmod linoleum. We just used it for “stuff.” If Daddy was looking for his professional bacon slicer, ‘cause who doesn’t prefer their bacon in whole hog form, he needn’t look any further than the trailer. When Momma’s portable/ inflatable hair dryer bonnet went on the fritz, meaning I was a 6 year old child with a wet head full of brush rollers, she just summoned for her official beauty shop hair dryer chair with the huge plastic pull down dome and the brown naugahyde seat. After all, it was just in the trailer. Similarly, I recall my Aunt Johnnie’s house, but not her real house, mind you, just her first house – the one with all her stuff. I can’t remember what we were searching for that day, but I was haunted by all the antique furniture draped in white sheets. “DD, watch out for that floorboard over there. See the one that’s bucklin’ up? It’ll give way if you step on it.” Yes, there were actual holes in the floor of Aunt Johnnie’s “stuff” house. I was convinced hobgoblins were lying in wait, their gnarly knuckled twisted hands reaching out for the ankles of yummy tasting children. Yet, I wasn’t as scared as I was mesmerized by what those places held: stories, emotions, pleas born of the fear of being forgotten. Thus began a lifelong addiction to all things old & decrepit, objects with chippy peely paint, once loved things left to decay in dark corners, and, most especially, falling down and often abandoned houses. In the 80’s, during one of my failed community college stints aimed at becoming the next Frank Lloyd Wright, I found both kinship with like minds and a 70’s documentary with a cult following. Welcome to Grey Gardens.