I don’t know how much you know about me. My life is a bit of a mystery. Ahem. Cough. So let me tell you. I feel the same way, not in an Alzheimer’s way, but in rediscovery.
Yesterday I completed the Chore of Chores, the Mother of All Chores, the Chore that builds up and backs up and stacks up for years, decades, maybe scores. In doing so I also at last accomplished another life-long goal, something I’d been imagining doing since I was a child, and it unfolded just the way I’d envisioned it.
For seven hours yesterday, home alone with music playing, I decided to go through all my accumulated paperwork that I’ve collected over my life, every bill, receipt, letter, deed, transaction, report, map, newspaper clipping, vacation brochure, short story, poem, college paper, childhood drawing, loose photograph, and business card. I emptied file cabinets, pulled down boxes, and opened old envelopes.
Drudgery was part of it. I purged every bill, receipt, and invoice over five-years old, requiring me to unfold a lot of wrinkled documents and squint at faded fine print. I did all that first, up front, then in the afternoon I took my expedition to the garage.
The garage is my cozy space. It’s where I keep all the furniture my wife tries to throw out. I put on some tunes, sat in my reject recliner, and reminisced the day away. Unopened folders sat on my left. The perused sat on my right. Baby pictures. Report cards from elementary school. Letters from friends. Newspaper clippings of me winning mention in a Halloween costume parade. It was all there, and Van Morrison was filling the auditory air with his warm fuzzies.
I was so amazed, overwhelmed by the flood of memories that came back with every manila folder I broke open, I had to go bed. My brain was completely full for the day. I couldn’t even look at my phone.
All my life I’ve kept memorabilia, ticket stubs, fliers, badges and such. Every time I sketched anything as a kid, I kept it. As a teenager I wrote lots of love poems, and kept them all. I kept every short story I ever started, even if it only made it through one paragraph. I kept them for one good reason only. I wanted to have them when I was an old man to gaze upon and reminisce about my life.
So all my life I have planned for this day, but it arrived unexpectedly when I awoke without a chore, and I use the word chore in the positive sense of getting something done.
I did have a major moment. It was like three hours long. I made a re-discovery that blew my mind. Here it is: I wrote a lot before anyone was reading it.
I was able to pull out, and pull down, and pile up in one stack every word I’d ever written and kept that wasn’t digitized. The thick folders of short story manuscripts and poetry I pumped out from the days of single digits up until Bob Silva invited me to join the Herald stacked up as high as the scar on my shin where I fell out of a tree house.
All told my folders contained about 100 poems and 50 short stories in all levels of completion from one paragraph to 25-30 pages, all banged out on a Sears electric typewriter I got for Christmas in my early teens. I reread as many as I could. Many I’d completely forgotten about. I kept thinking, “I wrote that?” “I wrote that?” “Wow.”
One day as a bored kid I tried to write as many one-page short stories as possible in one sitting. I have 13. Rereading them cracked me up. Some are doozies, and some are woozy.
Except for one Playboy publication of an article I wrote on John Dillinger and the acceptance of my senior play to be performed by the Penn State Theater Department, none of that writing has ever seen the light of day. My eyes only.
It wasn’t for not trying. I have an envelope full of rejection slips from some great magazines all across America. I’ve been turned down by the best. Anyhow, at the time of writing, I had no real interest in publishing. I just enjoyed writing for myself. I guess I’m still doing that.
I’m wrestling with the urge to retype some of my old stories and touch them up. They are currently stacked beside me as I type this, which gives me a plan for next week’s column. I’m going to read through this stack again, pull out a few stories that I enjoyed, and share with you just the opening lines of each one. They will be like small buds bursting from the soil into the light, or perhaps like the beginning of a rash.
To all who are celebrating New Years, have a happy. Remember to save your ticket stubs. You can look at them again in your garage when you’re 63 in an old chair.

Steve Gibbs is a retired Benicia High School teacher who has written a column for The Herald since 1985.

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