Page 110 July 30, 2021 DAN’S PAPERS danspapers.com
HERE’S TO CLUTTER! Every year brings an avalanche of
new books, newspaper, online articles
and television coverage telling
us to rid our lives of clutter. You know
what I mean, all that stuff you’ve been
holding on to for decades.
We’re warned of its deadly evils:
“Clutter and hernias—the painful
connection.”
“A crowded attic—the psychological
toll.”
“Hoarder crushed by rubbish!”
Ok, I get it. But …
Maybe, just maybe, you could look
at it this way—there in your storage
locker, or in the boxes piled in
your basement, or in those plastic
containers on top of that old sled, or
somewhere in the newspapers and
magazines heaped next to your sadly
worn-out 45-RPM record player are
triggers that could evoke some of the
most powerful memories of your life.
This past March, I had to address
the issue of confronting all the possessions
I’d kept in the past 60 years. It
was finally the time to remove everything
from the family home where I’d
grown up in Philadelphia, to prepare
it for sale. I’d moved there when I was
7 years old. Since graduate school at
Penn in 1964, the basement in that
beloved house was where I’d taken all
that I thought worthy of saving. “Are
you nuts, why are you keeping that?”
my friends would ask.
To say that I dreaded doing this
job—not just the dealing with the towering
cartons of my “stuff,” but the
clearing of the entire house of every
single object—is an acute understatement.
I saw this as a challenge rivaled
only by my eight weeks of Army basic
training during a brutal winter at Ft.
Knox, my five-hour bi-lateral hip replacement
surgery at HSS or my drive
from Midtown Manhattan at 5 p.m. on
a Friday in August trying to make an
8 p.m. curtain at Guild Hall. (No way,
but I made the 10 p.m. dinner at The
Palm.)
That anxiety, it turned out, was
unfounded.
I’d given myself loads of time to do
the job, so there’d be no high-pressure
rush to make the date when we’d list
the house for sale. When I started
working on emptying boxes, sure I
found some things that were indeed,
EAST END LIVING
crazy to save—like the framed award
from the Worm Growers Association
of America, who must have appeared
on one of my shows, or a badge gifted
to me on another program stating I
was a special narcotics agent. I don’t
think I ever wore that one to Studio
54.
The current cultural narrative
demands that we
clear out, de-clutter, tidy
up and get rid of all but
needed possessions.
And yet, most of what
I uncovered in those
boxes provided a counter
argument: There was joy
in those letters, telegrams,
ticket stubs, playbills, desk
calendars, newspaper clippings, invitations,
WRITERS
COLUMN
journals, trinkets, business
cards, photographs, posters, scripts,
post cards and on and on.
It’s possible, I realized, to relive
and experience events simply by
holding an object. The artifacts were
self-affirming evidence to me of a life
and a career well lived, and I walked
down a memory lane of the eras they
recalled. At one point, my eyes welled
up realizing, “the childhood dreams
I had for myself in this house came
true.” Lucky me, I know, and I walk in
gratitude for my blessings.
One packed old briefcase held a special
allure—photos from 1978–83, my
first years in Sagaponack. I had a small
two-bedroom beachfront cottage with
my pal, Bob Levine. It was in a perfect
location behind a very high dune on
the former 40-acre beachfront farm of
A
John White. There’s a book, or a movie,
or a play, or something to tell in
the wild, wonderful stories from those
hedonistic summers, and their painful
long drives back to work on Monday
mornings for a Midday Live TV show.
Bob and his wife Joan now have a
wonderful home in Northwest Harbor
in East Hampton, and my girlfriend
Jane Rothchild and I are in Springs.
With us down in the basement,
moved from Philadelphia and newlystored
in plastic bins, is the story of
my life in those letters, telegrams,
tickets stubs, journals, postcards and
on and on.
Bill Boggs, who lives in Springs,
is an Emmy-winning TV host, producer,
professional speaker, as well
as the author of three books. His latest
is the acclaimed satirical novel,
The Adventures of Spike the Wonder
Dog: As Told to Bill Boggs. It’s
available at Amazon, bookstores
and anywhere books are sold. Find
Boggs on BillBoggsTV on YouTube,
on Instagram @realbillboggs and at
billboggs.com.
Up at Bat:
Bill Boggs
BILL BOGGS
“Clutter and hernias–
the painful connection.”
“A crowded attic–
the psychological toll.”
“Hoarder crushed by rubbish!”
Ok, I get it. But …
“
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