Pearl Snap Shirts...

I've mentioned before that when we moved into this house in 1979 we had moved 21 times in our 13 years of marriage. Every single time we moved I cleaned closets as well as the whole house in the house we were moving out of. I cleaned closets and the whole house before we moved into the new one.

By the time we'd moved about 19 times I was tired of moving things we hadn't used in more than a decade so the garbage man and I worked up a relationship. I threw it into the dumpster on the night before he came around to collect the stuff on our street. That way it was never there long enough for Mr. B to run out there and take it all back into the house.

It's not his fault. He comes from a long line of hoarders. I did not realize how deep the hoarding DNA was until we had to move his mother out of a two story, full attic and basement house and into something smaller with no attic and no basement.

But back to that 19th move...Mr. B had brought home two pearl snap shirts when he was discharged from the Army many years before. And they had been packed and moved, unpacked, washed and ironed and hung in the closet until time to move again. They were yellowed around the cuffs and neck and didn't even fit him any more. So the night before the garbage man made his rounds which was also the night before we were to move the next day, those pearl snap shirts went to the dumpster.

Now fast forward ahead about three years and two moves later. He came out of the bedroom with this quizzical expression on his face and said, "Where are those pearl snap shirts I brought home from the Army. I want to wear one tomorrow."

"One," I held up a finger. "They don't fit you anymore. Southern cookin' has put pounds on you, darlin' and they were too little." I held up another finger. "And two, you haven't worn them in years." Third finger. "And three, I threw them away."

He tore out the back door toward the dumpster at the back of our lot, yelling that those were his best shirts, that they did fit him and that he did wear them often.

He made it about half way to the dumpster before I hollered, "Darlin', I threw them away three years ago!"

I do believe that all the hoarding husbands marched on City Hall when the wives were out shopping because not long after that, the city decided to do away with the big dumpsters and start using poly carts.

That was a sad day!!