Cig Butts Keep Falling On My Head
A trash journal goes international and Claude-by-Cheese vol. 2 drops.
The State of the Paper
Ups and downs have bounced me around the weeks of April. In an up-swing moment I submitted my first piece of fiction to a literary magazine. This is technically my second submission since, way back in high school, I sent a rough manuscript of the first book I ever wrote to a local publisher. I feel bad for anyone who had to even read the first page of that. This time around, I am far more confident in my work despite some sacrifices I had to make to get the piece within the word count limitations of the magazine. There is excitement in either receiving a yes or in getting a rejection. The latter might sound weird to some, but any movement on my writing makes me feel more like a writer and less like a keyboard tapping robot.
For those waiting with baited breath on an update about my novel will be happy to know I am entering the last fourth of the book. My progress has slowed but I am keeping myself in it, and hopefully will swing the ship into port in a month or two, depending on how fast I can type.
As far as this month’s edition goes, I have a piece on the distance trash travels and a new trash mystery. The Claude-by-Cheese series continues (thank you Ruth for your transcriptions), and finally, we close out with the ever popular Ruth’s Book Corner, this edition taking a philosophical bend. I hope you enjoy, and as always thank you for reading.
-Niall
How Far Will A Trash Journal Go?
Like all of my great ideas, my wife came up with this first. Well, that’s not exactly right. I don’t know who exactly came up with Trash Journaling first, but my wife definitely bears credit for planting the idea back into my brain. A couple of months ago, she mentioned doing a trash journal and that got me hooked on the idea of doing the same. I already had a journal I was sorta doing collages in already, so it was an easy transition to trash journal for it. For those who don’t know, trash journaling is defined by me as taking trash from your day or things you would throw out and putting them (usually with glue) into a journal. I wanted to use more of the trash that I found around Philly (as the founder of Philly Trash Paper, this only seemed apt).
We will quickly step away from trash journaling for an important contextual sidebar. Trust me, we will get back to trash journaling and it will make sense in the end. So let’s talk about tourism. More specifically tourism in Philly. As a noncontiguous Philly resident for about 5 years now, I never think of the city as a preeminent tourist destination. It’s home to me, but that’s not the case for many. According to the city, in 2024 there were 26.6 million visitors which had an economic impact of $7,000,000 being generated for Philadelphia. Those numbers are only set to explode in 2026. With the FIFA World Cup to have 6 matches in Philly, as well as hosting the PGA Championship nearby, in addition to the MLB All-Star game, and to add on top of all of that the America’s 250th celebration will take in part here. The city will see an influx of travelers like it has never seen before. I could talk about the impact these events will have on the city and how it is preparing for it all, but that’s an article for another day. This truly was a quick sidebar about tourism.
As March closed its doors to us, I picked up my first piece of sidewalk trash while on an evening stroll with Taylor and the dog. It was a Peanut Chew wrapper, a Philadelphia-made candy of dark chocolate with a chewy peanut interior, one of Taylor’s favorites. I thought this was a truly fitting piece to start my trash journal with. I didn’t pick up my second piece of trash until a few days later when out on my own with the dog, I spotted a larger than average ticket stub. Scooping it up I saw a ferris wheel on it right before I stuffed it in my jacket and continued on our merry way. Back in our apartment, the ticket turned out to be a far flung surprise. A stub that traveled 4,333 miles from Austria. The Wiener Riesenrad is Vienna’s “giant ferris wheel”, an approximate 10 hour flight from Philadelphia. Somehow it had ended up a mere couple blocks from the wrapper that had originated in Philly itself. Both now glued side-by side on the same page of a trash journal. In this day and age, it feels like the world is so scrunched together, but finding a piece of trash that had flown thousands of miles to be left in my neighborhood feels like an incredible feat. It makes one think about the kind of trash I will find this summer. Scattered amongst the restaurant fliers and miller lite cans, what little bit of another city, another country, another continent, might I find?
The Peanut Chew wrapper next to the Wiener Riesenrad ticket.
The Great Trash Mystery
A Philly Tash Mystery has landed in my own backyard. Cigarette butts have been appearing in and around the back area of our apartment. A 5 foot high wood fence surrounds the space and it is off of a tiny alleyway that only residents and occasional delivery people will use. We started finding the butts towards the end of March. A couple would be near our car which is parked on the other side of our fence, and one or two more would be under the table or chairs we have in the backyard. At first all of the cigarettes were Marlboro alternating between menthols and golds. But lately it has been a mix with some Camel and hand rolled popping up. They also appeared some time between when Taylor and I went to bed to when we woke up and checked the backyard.
One even made it onto the wipers of my car.
In the past I had seen some next door neighbors smoking in the alleyway, only a couple of feet from our backyard. This was a rare occasion but I jumped to conclusions and assumed they were the culprit. Some uncourteous smokers toss their butts into our backyard for whatever reason. But we continued to find butts and I hadn’t seen anyone smoking next door. I then turned my assumptions skyward. The roof top decks of the building next to ours and the one attached to the building we were in, could be the only ones tossing it in our backyard, or so I thought.
After inspection and a closer thought on physics, it was determined that the rooftop decks were too far back to be able to toss a butt all the way into our backyard with the accuracy that was being displayed by the mystery smoker. The butts continued to pile up with 35 butts appearing in the back or around the car over the course of a month. Suspicion moved onto our upstairs neighbor. He had a window that was directly over our backyard and he would spend a lot of time by his computer which was right by that window. We thought that he was smoking out the window and tossing the butts into our backyard. This flew in the face of what we thought had been a pretty good relationship with him up until that point. He had asked us last year not to make fires in our trash-picked fire pit, because the smoke was going directly into his apartment. We said not a problem, and have texted back and forth with him since then. My perception of him was that he was a nice, if not quiet, guy that would on occasion yell at his cat not to do something. It just didn’t fit that he would be the smoking bandit.
The butts have slowed their descent in the beginning and middle of April, only 5 appearing between April 3rd to April 26th. We recently had to evacuate the building (gas leak) and I made sure Josh (upstairs neighbor) and his cat got out safely and let him know when it was safe to reenter our building. Taylor ran into him the next day and they chatted amiably on the stairwell. She came back into our apartment convinced that our neighbor was not the one dropping butts on us. So we are back at square one with this mystery and exhausted our list of potential suspects. Well, there is still one that is such an out there possibility that I discounted it way back at the start of this mystery when Taylor posited it as an explanation. The squirrels. We have a couple of squirrels living in the walls of the building that use our backyard fence as a highway. You can watch the backyard and within the hour you are all but guaranteed to spot a couple squirrels. Taylor’s hypothesis is that since she has left out some nuts for them in the past, the squirrels have decided to reciprocate with gifts of their own. How does one tell a squirrel that they don’t smoke? I will keep you posted on whether these furry tailed creatures are our true culprits or there really is a smoking bandit out to drive us crazy.
The board of butts found in the backyard.
Claude-by-Cheese Vol.2
The day after getting the verbal account of the ol’ salt mouse’s time in Claude-by-Cheese and the mysterious cheese master there, I turned in my assignment on the effects of maritime work on mice. Upon doing so I immediately cashed in my healthy stock pile of vacation days. In my apartment the night before, and even on the train to the institute early in the morning, I could not shake the idea of the town that didn’t appear on any maps.
My supervisor wasn’t terribly excited by the prospect of my fable hunting vacation.
“Are you sure about this? That old sea mouse has probably seen one or two many oars to the head to be a reliable source of information. Besides, how many concussions can a mouse brain handle?”
This sent Dezi down a mouse hole concerning medical testing on mice brains as it related to head trauma. My supervisor, and if the weather was right, my friend, was the definition of a Golden Mouse. Some assistants had a running joke that Dezi was how Webster came up with the genus of the Cricetidae family. Thick golden fur with feet with an underbellymore white, and grey whiskers, gave her the appearance of someone who was a warmhearted pushover. She was anything but.
“I have the time off for it and you are always telling me to use it. I can’t see a better chance.”
This was a half truth, I had a distant cousin of mine getting married next month which technically would have constituted a better use by my mother’s standards. However I had been looking for a way out of attending, and spending all my time off seemed like a pretty good excuse.
“I told you to go on a vacation so that you would get out of my hair for half a second. Not so you could get killed on some wild tail chase. If you died I would have to replace my best researcher. Don’t get yourself killed, it would be too much of a hassle for me to deal with. You can get maimed as long as it’s not your writing paw.”
That was the closest I was going to get to a blessing out of Dezi, so I scurried out of her office before she could change her mind.
Before leaving the institute, I ducked into the maps department. A quick check of their archives confirmed my initial research from last night. There was no trace of Claude-by-Cheese on any current records. If I was going to get to the bottom of this, or even the start of it, I was going to need to go digging off the record.
My second stop took me away from the orderly shelves and systematized records of the institute and into the gloomy hubbub of Olde-Town. For those unaware, this section of the city was one that the general populace liked to forget existed. Gloomy, crumbling, and ancient is a pretty succinct way of putting it for those who know its depths. For those who don’t, they simply call it seedy.
Learned mice, particularly those of an anthropological pursuit (amongst which I consider myself a part of), should see no difference between the padded luxuries of the rich and the leaky roofs of the not so rich. My mentor Bernard was fond of saying “A good scholar studies every bit of life they can grasp, and even ones they can’t.”
Because of this outlook, I have fostered many contacts and friends amongst the different folds of the city’s populace. One such contact happened to have an extensive collection of documents “rescued from destruction” and lived in the heart of Olde-Town.
Reg opened their front door after clanging six different locks. Tucked far back in an alleyway behind a bakery, it fit the secrecy that Reg brought to every aspect of their life. Slightly bigger in stature than I, Reg squeezed themself through the narrow door to take a quick appraisal of the alleyway and myself. They were a vole of deep brown fur that had faded colorless at the edges from the lack of time spent outside.
“Quickly, were you followed?”
“Never, I made sure to cover my tail even if I was.”
The caution Reg displayed was a common trait amongst most Olde-Town residents, but, coupled with their crippling paranoia, made them believe that malevolent forces were conspiring against them. I personally did not think this fear was justified, but also didn’t have the heart to talk them out of it.
The alleyway passed Reg’s inspection and we scampered inside, Reg securing the bolts back into place and locking us in. The interior of Reg’s house was dim and vast. Small tufts of glowing moss were strategically placed to give some lighting, since open flame and electricity cause Reg to have panic attacks about their collection burning down. The only thing besides a small living room up front were endless rows of shelves, all containing mounds and heaps of documents, records, and unimaginable dossiers.
“So what brings you to my lovely abode unannounced?
“I was hoping you would have something on a town called Claude-by-Cheese. I heard a story about it being home to a cheese master and it does not appear on any map the Institute has. You know I am with a mystery.”
“Cant ever leave it alone, I know. Well I don’t know anything off the top of my head, but let’s see if I have anything in my collection that could help shine some light on this. Metaphorically speaking, which reminds me, you don’t have anything that could cause a spark do you?”
I showed Reg that my pockets only contained a small notebook and my trusty Mouseblanc fountain pen. With that precaution seen to, Reg grabbed a jar of glowing moss and we set off down the main walkway that ran between the sprawl of shelves. I found myself shivering in spite of the mild temperature in the room. The rows of documents spilling over into their neighbors and puddling on the floor gave an eerie sadness to the place.
“If you remember, my system looks chaotic to the untrained eye but I would go so far as to say it’s the most advanced document sorting and cataloging system in the world. That’s part of the reason I’m being targeted like I am. The things they could do with this system, it chills you to the bone just thinking about it.”
I muttered agreement and tuned out the rambling diatribe Reg was building up to. We had reached a section of shelves that made the ones before them to be orderly and organized. Folders were jammed in every crack and crevice the shelf had to offer. Stacks of paper filled the space between the shelves, coating the ground in mounds of white and yellowed documents.
“Just through here, we should find something.”
Reg waded into the chaos without a second of hesitation. I watched as their clawed feet scampered over folios and brown bound books, sheets of paper shooting into the air and raining down around me. I lost sight of them and only with the occasional toss of documents in the air did I know Reg was on the hunt. I chose to stay out of the mess and looked through the things I could reach from the safety of the clear aisle.
Flipping through some dry cleaning receipts of political officials and first drafts of inventory reports for the agricultural department, I was hit with the feeling that maybe this really was a useless endeavor. What were the chances of finding a scrap that told me where this fabled town existed? The situation was seemingly more and more like a needle in a whole hay field of other similar looking needles.
In my moment of doubt, I knocked a large, tightly wound stack of folders out of position and onto the floor. Bending to retrieve them, I couldn’t help but glance at the large block letters crawled across the top facing folder.
“The Crimes of DIESIST.”
Reg was suddenly at the my elbow, taking the folder from my paws and tucking it under their arm.
“You don’t want to look at that, I can’t have another soul dragged under their ever-watchful eye and ever-present hand.”
“What do you mean? What is Diesist?”
“For your own health and safety you should forget you heard that name.”
“But…”
“Oh look, I was able to find this on your ghost town.”
Reg held up a torn letter, filled with scribbled words. I took it and quickly glanced through its contents. The letter was re-telling an old children’s rhyme about how to find Claude-by-Cheese.
Gather round and take your leave
We will look to the quarter wheel
To find our Claude-by-Cheese
Don’t miss the brown bear’s meal
By way we find the way to please
Never waver the heading is real
And when you least expect a bee
The sting reveals our town on keel
“What does this mean?”
Reg just shrugged their shoulders.
“That sounds more of your area of expertise than mine.”
Thanking Reg for their help while navigating back to the front of the rows of shelves, I pondered on the words. The more I turned them over the more I thought there was something there.
“Thank you as always Reg, pleasure has been all mine”, I said while the bolts snicked to let me out. The door swung wide and gloomy sunlight blinded us. When our eyes readjusted there was a surprise pinned to the door with a wickedly sharp length of metal. A piece of paper written on with red bloody letters spelling out;
CEASE OR DIE
Reg and I shared a look, their features pinched in a story scrunch.
“It looks like they know about you and your mystery town.”
Ruth’s Book Corner
I might be a tad bit dumb. It took me until the second book in a series to see the skeleton of Sherlock Holmes underneath it all. Let me explain, the book in question is A Drop of Corruption, the follow up to The Tainted Cup. These two books are set in a world of leviathans set on wreaking havoc on the expansive and corruption filled Empire. Our hero of the story takes their due in two characters, the lead investigator of the Empire’s internal investigation division (think FBI/Internal Affairs) Ana Dolabra and her assistant Dinios Kol.
I loved The Tainted Cup; its characters, the mystery, the world, and most of all the dynamic between Ana and Din. I don’t know how it escaped me until I was a third of the way through the second book (A Drop of Corruption) before it hit me, Ana was Sherlock and Din was Watson. To be fair to my little mouse brain, it is thoroughly entrenched in a rich fantasy world and the comparisons are not one to one. Robert Jackson Bennet does not lift Sherlock up from Victorian England and gender swap the character into a dark and gritty magic system. There are tweaks and changes here and there to make the character its own person. But the skeleton remains, fondness and use of mind altering substances, melancholy after a case is finished, figuring the mystery out far before everyone else, but not revealing it until the end. The list can go on, but I think you get the point. This is still relevant for Din, though a little less so. Bennet makes more significant changes to our assistant to make him less of an audience proxy and more of an actual character.
Seeing the bones of Sherlock below the surface of the book didn’t at all diminish the reading experience. It did however bring up the thought of whether or not the detective genre will always have the ghost of Sherlock looming over its shoulder. The tropes and themes that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle popularized through Sherlock are what all modern detective fiction is built on. Just like how modern fantasy is built on the back of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, it feels inescapable when drawing the line through detective fiction to not end up at the deer hunter’s cap of Sherlock Holmes. Here I have no further elucidations for you, I am still wondering over the pull and push of the giants that genre fiction is built upon. Great writers are able to pluck useful threads from what came before and spin it into the what comes after. Literature is an ever evolving beast running wild in the pages of our imagination.
Read (or listen, the audiobook is well narrated) The Tainted Cup and A Drop of Corruption for a detective fantasy mystery that you won’t soon regret. The third book is set to be published this year so catch up on how Sherlock’s ghost lives on in cross genre fiction.
-Ruth
Claude-by-Cheese
April 2026’s Edition of the PTP brings you a look at grief and much more.
The State of the Paper
There is lots to say about how March came and went. Weather fluctuations that gave whiplash and clothing choice confusion. Days and nights of writing slowly and steadily. I did some heavy reconnaissance on what magazines I want to submit to. Ran through my piece, Their Forked and Destroying Tounges, to tweak and polish for submission. I am close to pulling the trigger on it and sending it out.
As far as this edition of the paper, we have a couple of interesting pieces for you. There is A Modern Tableau of Grief inspired from a recent walk I took with Greta. Then we have an excerpt from Ruth’s Great-Uncle’s academic journal, which Ruth has so graciously provided. This will be an ongoing series. As always we have Ruth’s book club, which leads us to the finale of the Red Devil Motel. I want to take the time to thank Nick for allowing his piece to be featured here. As always thank you for reading and supporting Philly’s #1 trash based paper.
-Niall
A Modern Tableau of Grief
The day before St. Patty’s day, I was finishing the morning walk with the dog. I speak of the date to set a background of broken shamrock glasses and green confetti littering the already normal trash set out for city workers. The dog and I round onto our block to find a viewing underway. The funeral home, three doors down, has a lane of Spring Garden blocked and mourning vehicles squeeze between two orange cones.
There are two men somewhere in their twenties on the steps. One sitting sprawled under the crimson awning, the other stands lighting a cigarette. He is not immediately identifiable as to be of lamentation. Blue oversized and button up contrasts the fitted tan of his pants. He wears the red, green, and white kaleidoscope of Adidas street shoes. The puffs he pulls and words he converses with are absent of any hitch or crack.
Neither of them speak softly, nor do they speak loudly. Their pace is relaxed and accepting, open to one another.
As the dog and I pass, a woman holding a child comes out to join them. The one on the stairs takes up being a father while the mom tells a story from inside. I don’t hear the peak of it, but it reads as familial to the eye. Something shared over a drink in a way that gathers their loss.
As I push my key into our door and swing it open for the dog, I take one last look. The child holds her father’s hands while the conversation continues around her. The cigarette smoke collects under the clouds and no one laughs.
Uncle Ernest’s Journals: Claude-by-Cheese Vol.1
*Editor’s note (NC): Ruth came into some academic journals from a distant Great-Uncle and thought to publish them here for our readers to enjoy.
The town of Claude-by-Cheese, as the name suggests, was a collection of two dozen or so buildings on the banks of the slow churning Cheese river. It’s quite alright if you have never heard of it, the town hasn’t appeared on a map since 1919. This was mostly due to the ministrations of one particularly scorned ex-fiancé who had far too much power within the census bureau. Todd Billings returned from the first World War to find his fiancé (here too) had run off in his absence with a boy from Claude-by-Cheese. When it came time to do his job, Todd made sure the town was skipped and made it his personal mission to have it be completely ignored by anyone outside of Claude-by-Cheese. So that is how the town disappeared into the annals of bureaucratic petty revenge. Since then no one has particularly cared to correct the mistake.
Some eighty years after its disappearance, I (Ernest P. Archibald Mouse) hope to bring it back on to the map and into the cultural consciousness. The following will be my journal of my time and documentation of Claude-by-Cheese.
The way I arrived upon my current topic of study has lady fortune’s paws all over it. I was finishing some interviews with local dock mice, it was an anthropological review of the effects of maritime work on mice, when I overheard something that piqued my ears. The bartender was interrogating a salty gray whiskered mouse about a master cheese maker the sailor had reported to have met with. For those who don’t know, a master cheese maker requires decades of learning and refining techniques to achieve the title. There are only about a baker’s dozen currently alive in the entire world.
I saddled up to the old paw, bought him a drink, and lent my ear to his tale. What follows is a transcription of said tale.
My cousin knew a mouse that had a rat-scraper1 and was planning on taking it on a run past the blockade (this was back before the Free Mouse Agreement had been drafted) to the town of Porter-Pa. They had some half decent Havarti and fermented yogurt, which would fetch a pretty penny due to the trade restrictions. So myself and a couple others took that rat-scraper smooth on through to Porter-Pa. It went so easy for us that we got bloated with confidence. We spent the night traipsing the town in celebration of a job half done. Our tails were bitten through when one of our group threw an empty glass at some snickering bar patrons. The constables chased us down and out of town in the height of the night. In our haste and the gloom of darkness, we took the wrong branch out of Porter-Pa. Down the teeth of a furious river we bounced and splashed, eventually striking and sinking the vessel. Six mice went into the foam and churn. When I awoke, I was alone on a bank. Little micelings stood above me, sticks poised to prod my water logged bones. The river had washed me up into a town called Claude-by-Cheese and that’s where I dined upon the finest cheese mouse-kind has ever tasted.
I continued to ply the old mouse with drink and he told me about how he had never seen the cheese master in the flesh. There was always a willow reed screen that the master hid behind when you went into the little white-washed storefront. The old mouse had stayed in Claude-by-Cheese for a year, never feeling a strong pull to return to life outside of the little village. Then one day, while he helped the washer woman with her chores, he received a blow to the back of the head and fell unconscious. Later he awoke on a little raft floating down the river. He has searched for but never found Claude-by-Cheese again.
Intrigued by the mysterious cheese master and by the town itself I decided then in that dockside bar to find both. I never expected it to turn into the adventure of a lifetime.
To Be Continued…
Editor’s note: Claude-by-Cheese was a creation by the infamous editor, Taylor Anderson. If you want to know the origin story, please send a written request and check for $25 by carrier pigeon or another mail-delivery animal.
Ruth’s Book Corner
As previously mentioned in last month’s edition I have been in the laboratory cooking up a monster review. But by the time I hit page five of the document I knew I had reevaluated what was going on. There are times both as a reader and as a book reviewer that you get so wound up over how a book has bothered you, that it becomes impossible to explain it coherently. The rage just takes over and every small thing is a slight against you as a mouse. Laying out all of those slights is not worth reading about and entirely not entertaining. I had a fiery review but not one that would give anyone joy to read. Thus I have scrapped the review of Wrath by Sharon Moalem and Daniel Kraus for the far more enjoyable experience of Blue Pastures by Mary Oliver.
Before we fully move on, I will share my favorite quote from Wrath just as a little dig at the book. This quote comes with only 19 pages left in the book and the very climax of what is the New York rodent population led by a genetically enhanced rat taking over the city. This is the capping point of all of these idiot human characters causing this disaster to happen through their direct actions and hubris. When you have reached this point where you think that these humans really deserve all of this and have been truly horrible to the rats, which is why this rise up happened in the first place, the super rat goes…
“Humans helped humans … Have I been wrong the whole time?
Do humans have something rats do not” (Wrath pg. 290)
This after about 290 pages saying that rats have community and help one another. The idiocy of this had me putting the book down for a solid five minutes as I stared into nothingness after reading it.
With that off my chest, we can move onto a much more pleasurable reading experience. Blue Pastures is Mary Oliver’s 10th published book and her first work of prose, released in 1995. It fails to really fall on a general area of focus, which means the book is better off for that. This collection of writing has been the most expressive and intimate of Mary Oliver’s work as far as the clarity of how Oliver speaks. She pontificates, biographs, and spins thoughtfully crafted lines. She allows herself more room than in her poetry and still maintains a sharp eye towards crafting and the beautification of her lines.
I am in no way unbiased when it comes to Mary Oliver. Ever since the boss man hired me, I have heard the praise of Oliver sung from the rafters. My experience, because of this, is colored. But every time I pick up one of her books, it always seems to be the right time to enjoy it. Approachable for a nature lover and for those who appreciate a careful eye towards the human existence. Blue Pastures is easily my favorite non-poetry work of Oliver’s. It’s revealing and human with loving gentleness that wraps you comfortably in its words. This is a read anyone will enjoy and should enjoy.
-Ruth
Red Devil Motel: Part 3
The Red Devil Motel Series has been omitted here. You can read all of them over on the Substack.
Finders Keepers for Friends in Fishtown
A little day of trash picking and the second part of Red Devil Motel in March's edition of the PTP.
The State of the Paper
Spring seems to be fighting its way into our lives once again. Sunshine actually warms you up and the thermometer’s mercury seems to be once again trying to make someone’s day. In this change of seasons, I am continuing to write everyday. I have found a goal of 300 words a day gets me writing and keeps me writing past it. Because of this I have made substantial progress on the novel I am working on. I won’t make you sit through a whole prolonged diatribe on it just yet. Needless to say it has some hiking and some horror adjacent elements, oh and a healthy look at grief and its impact on relationships. All the fun stuff you could think of. That’s all to say, it’s still very much a work in progress. But enough about me, we have a whole paper to get to. Like last time, the second part of Nick’s Red Devil Motel will round this paper out.
Until next time my dear readers.
-Niall
A Second Home
On January 12th I set out on my bike armed with an N-95 and a good pair of work gloves. My destination was my wife’s cousin’s new house in Fishtown. The goal, or so I thought when I started the morning, was to help clean and clear out stuff from the newly purchased row home. The previous owners had passed and the descendants, instead of taking the time to go through everything, decided it was easier if it was sold as is. So, a better price, but with the hassle of cleaning up.
I arrived and had my expectations instantly realigned. The house had a lot more stuff than I expected. Think closer to a hoarding house than a Marie Kondo house. We also were not really cleaning up, we were there to take anything we wanted. The cousin had a junk removal team coming the next day, so whatever we didn’t take would be going to who knows where, most likely a landfill.
The scene from one of the rooms.
With the stage set lets introduce the fearless cast that waded through the mounds of memories and mementos. We have me, your inquisitive narrator and journalist; Lynn, my mother-in-law and a self-proclaimed antiques aficionado; Aunt (in-law) Julie, a sharp witted hunter of reading material for her grand kids; Zach and Kimmie, the new homeowners, not thrilled to have a new project as well as a one year old.
The smell of years worth of cigarette smoke was evident from the wallpaper, if not from the tinge it had left in the air. I stashed my bike in the already full entryway and took a wide-eyed tour of the place. As Lynn would say later, “you had to move things, to move things to get to the thing you were trying to get to.”
Starting in a bedroom, previously occupied by a boy of undeterminable age I got to work scavenging. I found Yu-Gi-oh cards right next to Slipknot CDs and college course material. Opening a dresser drawer I found a stash of old video games. I quickly had to grab a cardboard box to store my finds in. I built out a collection of books and games that any kid would love to have growing up, which was the goal. I wanted this stuff to have a new life with Zach and Kimmie’s nephews, and their own kid too.
Drawn by tales of even more stuff, Lynn and I braved the basement stairs and entered a tool lovers paradise. Screwdrivers spilled from boxes. Measuring tapes littered the space. There was a silver impact driver that required both of my hands to wield. I had to shut off the small raccoon part of my brain that wanted to take each and every bit of metal in the basement. I forced open a cabinet and found a fortune of work wear things. From Carhartt coveralls to thick leather gloves, the more I pulled out from the cabinet, the further my jaw fell. I filled two large black trash bags with clothes and before that was even done I had started a list of who I could share it with.
As of right now I have been able to find new homes for everything that has been cleaned. I like to believe the old owner, a grounds keeper for the Catholic Cemeteries Archdiocese of Philadelphia, would be happy that his well loved gear is finding second owners to love them just as much. Finding news in the trash is what PTP is all about.
One of the pieces that I was able to rehome.
Ruth’s Book Corner
I have been cooking up a monster review in my little laboratory. It is not quite done yet so I have a little something to tide you over until it is. John Steinbeck, a powerhouse of 20th century American literature, is probably known by every middle or early high school student in the country. Even though I didn’t have to read The Grapes of Wrath or Of Mice and Men, I certainly knew who Steinbeck was. Or at least I thought I knew who Steinbeck was. In the back of my mind I told myself I would get to Steinbeck one day or another, but was expecting a “dry classic” when I did.
Enter Cannery Row. On a terribly brisk afternoon, I opened a birthday present and found a glossy red cover staring back at me. My friend, a rather lustrous white-tailed deer with impeccable book recommendations, watched me over a white paper cup. I was excited to have a pocket sized edition, it felt much more approachable than the East of Eden tome that sits on my shelf. I first read the title as Canary Row and wasn’t corrected of this misconception until months later when it was the answer to a question on Jeopardy.
Cannery Row is a beautiful flowing tale of a group of guys that want to throw a party. It’s more complicated than that because there is some frog hunting that goes on. I joke, but the plot isn’t what drives the book. Steinbeck manages to weave gorgeous lines with punchy humor that underline this snapshot of a working coastal neighborhood in Monterey, California. With characters that are vibrant and scenes that move you, I couldn’t think of a better introduction to this literary powerhouse. I came away from the book truly in awe at the writing, and hungry for more Steinbeck.
-Ruth
Red Devil Motel: Part 2
The Red Devil Motel Series has been omitted here. You can read all of them over on the Substack.