Artists and Hoarders

Back to pouring your life and savings into an old house. We were owners of one back then. I think it was in late ’73  or early ’74. We’d been married a couple of years, long enough to have known better. We had bought a house in what is now “mid-town” Little Rock. We were well on our way to a place in Suburban Heaven. But no, we sought a warm corner of “Restoration Hell.” We had put the nice little house on the market and bought an old one for very little. We were young and ready for … for … whatever. We had hammers, saws, youth, and enthusiasm on our side.

Then we got to know Skip and Nila, the late Skip and Nila: Irving and Nila Skipper were the sellers of the Victorian cottage we were so hot to attack.

“Not so fast,” they let us know.” Therein we met the first roadblock. Here’s the background.

He was a heck of a nice guy. I had known him for a spell. He was a photographer, see, an expert in still and motion-camera work. In fact, he had converted the dining room of the old house into a movie studio with a camera station installed and everything. He claimed to have actually shot movie scenes therein back in his younger days.

He was also an illustrator who did “still-motion” work and advertising. Some old timers may remember the old AP&L ads featuring “Ready Kilowatt.” They might remember the promo where Ready started with a map marked with directions, in capital letters, for North, East, South, and West. He would give the map a whirl and the letters would fly off to form the word “NEWS.” Yeah, Arkansas Power and Light sponsored the evening news, starting off with the Ready Kilowatt ad.

Skipper did that one. He was some kind of genius.

As I say, I had known him for some time. He called his home a “studio,” but by the time I knew him, he didn’t do much. What he did do was develop color slides overnight. You could call him, meet him in the alley behind his house, (later to become then nerve center of our universe) and he would meet you, take your film, develop it, and bring it to you in the alley the next day. My work called for frequent trading with him.

Did I mention that he was a heck of a nice guy?

Well he was.

He was also the worst hoarder I’ve ever known. Uh, wait one … let’s just say that he was one of the worst hoarders I’ve ever known.

Know those little aluminum containers that film used to come in when you bought it? Well he had never thrown one away. He didn’t keep them for salvage value, or to sell to pot smokers, or to keep spices in, or any useful thing. He just kept them because he couldn’t bear to throw them away. He had bag after bag after bag of them, stored alongside the bag after bag after bag of burned-out light bulbs. He kept those because he might need them to make an ad. He never specified the use. Hoarders don’t. They put you off with a simple, “I might find a use for that someday.” Or, use the back up excuse: “It’s got to be good for something.”

That’s why husbands find 30 empty butter tubs stashed away in a cabinet, having no knowledge of them until they fall out in his face while he’s looking for his Swiss Army Knife he got for his 12^th birthday, the one with no blade left, just the corkscrew. Uh, I think that’s all for the day. Better close. More tomorrow.

Oh, before I leave: did I mention that we had given the Skippers 60 days to clean their junk out of the old house after we closed the sale?

I think it may be good idea
 to ease off about the hoarders.