CONFESSIONS OF A HOARDER
Meyer, Ernest L.
Confessions Of A Hoarder By ERNEST L. MEYER NEWSPAPERS recently reported the odd story of Mrs. Mary Jane Drummond, aged 90, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who during a span of half a century tucked away...
...Then I determine to wrap up a package of books for my Aunt Mehitabel...
...a hunk of string to its native lair...
...The hat bill, of course, induces a fresh fit of cares of state, and I shoot the robin...
...Drummond, a seamstress, secreted the money in two pieces of can-;as which were found between the pillows and mattress of her bed...
...In Hie piece of canvas, investigators iiscovered, she had secreted a $10 gold piece in each of 292 squares carefully sewn into the cloth...
...Professional String Hoarder And it works...
...immodestly tangled with a string of low d^ree found in the alley amid the bleached bones of a tub of lard...
...It makes 'em feel good...
...through our kitchen's special string-throwing window...
...My melancholia lessens, and it leaves me entirely in the next block when, with a howl of delight, I pluck a loop of shoestring from the cadaver of a moribund boot...
...True, because I am sad, I let my head hang...
...I ta^e that bowl of strin<r and hurl it...
...The cares of state are still on me...
...Despite my friends' warnings, I am ready to take on a new hoarding hobby, like that of the seamstress in Cedar...
...By rare good luck I am able to follow their advice...
...For years I have been a professional hoarder of string...
...Whenever I feel the cares of state weigh on me, I do not sit at home and think black, boggy thoughts...
...If any of my sympathetic readers wish to see me shed my cares of state, all they need do is send in what stray goldpieces they can find...
...And then I lean out and look at the mangled remains of my twine lving on the ground far below, huffling feebly the sad melodv in G strine...
...I'll supply the canvas sheet...
...This is an important item in the science 6f string-hoarding, because by fixing my eyes on the sidewalk I am able to track down...
...If you laid all the string used up at Christmas time end to end you'd be a- darn fool, so I wouldn't do it...
...And how my heart leaps when I behold a 10-inch hunk of twine reposing in the gutter on the, lugubrious fragments of a stale bun...
...During the ni^ht, apparently, those hundreds of neat little coils of string went on a soree for which any decent, home-loving twine would blush...
...the end of my rope...
...In the holiday season my hoarding hobby carries me over many spells of the doldrums...
...bowl and all...
...Mary Jane Drummond, aged 90, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who during a span of half a century tucked away the neat sum of $20,321...
...President Roosevelt hoards postage stamps...
...I began saving string when I learned that all great men have a hobby of some kind to get their minds off worries...
...Rapids who collected gold and sewed it into a canvas sheet...
...They get worse...
...I simply sneak up on an ash-can and pluck out the string before it can draw itself into a knot and back into its lair, hissing Christmas greetings frightfully...
...As an expert hoarder, I have gathered in bleak December dawns as much as three fathoms of red, white, gold, and silver string from the neighborhood trash-heaps without the use of artificial bait...
...And then, with a final and horrihle imprecation...
...I take a walk...
...Because at Christmas time people go in for an orgy of string-winding...
...And then such a wave of jov surges in my bosom, that I go completely cuckoo with happiness and buy my wife a new hat...
...At this writing, both of my bowls of string have been hurled out of the window...
...But when I need a bit of string I invariably find them contorted into the most uncouth combinations of granny-hitches, sailor's bowlines, slip-knots, and half-Nelsons...
...My enormous string collection is kept in a couple of big bowls in the pantry...
...My adrenals again function with precision, the sun shines, the birds sing, and the lambs gambol over the green with a heigh and a ho and a heigh-nonny-ho if they care for that sort of thing...
...Then I go outdoors and listen to the robins sing...
...The End Of His Rope So I go to work patiently trying to untangle a bit of cord with which to wrap up the package for my aunt...
...The King of Italy hoards old coins...
...All these loops, remember, were not tangled when I put them in the bowl...
...The finding of this trophy ends my fit of dejection...
...I get all snarled un in the loops...
...So I began hoarding string...
...I pick up the twine, loop it into a graceful coil, and tuck it in my pocket...
...My friends, however, pointed out that practically all gold-pieces are now buried in Federal vaults under the soil of Kentucky, and you can't get at 'em without a pickaxe...
...No, I take my melancholia out for a sun-bath...
...They added, sorrowfully, that you need a priority order for a pickaxe, so I'd better give up my ambition to hoard gold and start hoarding something that wouldn't give the Government the pip...
...I go to the nearest stringbowl and pull out a handful of loops...
...This story stirred me with an ambition to start right how and learn seamstressy, or whatever you call it, and begin the construction of a gold-piece crazy-quilt...
...1 do not touch them until I am overtaken by a really tremendous fit of the cares of state...
...I pull, nluck, and swear...
...Even the Christmas string, of Dure silver, for which I had entertained hio-h moral hones...
...They buy a dime gift, put it into a 15-cent box, and wrap that box up in a quarter's worth of glittering, beautiful string...
...I am, as it were, at...
...But I do recommend the ardent string-hoarder to busy himself in holiday week...
...And when dawn came, there they were, brazenlv hupping each other and shamelessly intertwined...
Vol. 8 • May 1944 • No. 18
