Edit on Feb 16. Well, I never got this done in a timely manner. I’ll post it now for what it’s worth.
I’m actually writing this Tuesday morning, February 3 and scheduling it to post on Friday Feb. 6th. On Friday I get the U-Hau; in the morning, the loaders load it in the afternoon, and on Saturday we drive. The following week, the estate sale people come in and whatever we leave behind will be sold the 13th-14th. The house should go on the market after that.
I’ll add an update on several days this week, at least until our internet is cut off, probably Thursday afternoon. I don’t yet have internet at the new house (investigating options), so I’m not sure when I’ll post again unless I write another one for posting during the dark time.
The Dungeon is all packed except for the modem, signal booster, and two mostly packed but not yet sealed boxes, waiting to see if I have any more small items to go in the top.
Tuesday, Feb 3. I woke at 3:45 a.m. and never got back to sleep. I read in the recliner for a while, in the last of the magazines I want to read and put in recycling before we leave. Then I tried to sleep, but couldn’t relax due to the massive amount of work yet to do. So I went out to the garage and worked on that. I had already packed my tools, but the box was too big. I got them re-packed in a properly sized box, boxed up the small amount of hardware I’m taking, pulled some shelf units out to the middle of the garage that I hope will fit in the truck, then went back in the house. I decided I won’t bring my drill, only the drill bits. I don’t know whether I’ll have to do any drilling. If I do, I will get a modern, cordless, chuck-less drill and let someone buy this old one.
The view this morning from my computer desk in The Dungeon. The rest of the house looks more or less the same, probably a little worse.
That’s all we have left at our current home. Just a week and a day. Then we move to Texas.
The whole house is discombobulated now, with packed boxes, half-packed boxes, packing materials, sorted and unsorted stuff strewn everywhere. If you’ve moved anytime recently, you get it. We haven’t moved since 2002. If you’ve downsized, you get it. We up-sized in 2002 and remained in accumulation mode, rather than decumulation.
Ah, well, decumulation began in 2020, when I decided I’d had my dad’s old tools for 22 years, had done nothing with them, and that other people needed them more than I did. I found lots of buyers on Facebook Marketplace. Before long, my garage looked better. With a little help from our son on one of his trips here, we even got to the point where we could get one car in.
Then I tackled the books, and between selling and donating them, we got rid of a couple of thousand. Before long, I moved on to paper items, digitizing my genealogy files and recycling the paper. Then on to writing files, making sure I had digital copies and back-ups, and again recycling the paper. All told, I was able to get rid of about 200 3-ring binders. The last 50 will go in our estate sale, each with a few tab dividers and sheet protectors in it.
I’m not sure whether I’ll get to post again from this side of the Red River, though I’ll try. If not, I’ll be back at it at some point. Y’all be good in the meantime.
Snow greeted our year, but my doctor said I shouldn’t shovel it.
A year such as 2025 can most easily be shared as a series of bullet points.
We began the year in Worcester, Massachusetts. This was a five-day trip by air, delayed a week after I suffered a seizure with ER visit on Dec. 22, 2024. We visited our son and his husband. It was a good trip, during which we celebrated my 73rd birthday and New Year’s Day rather than Christmas.
Charles was in good spirits before his brain surgery.
In February, our son, Charles, had brain surgery due to the seizure he suffered in Oct 2024. We flew back for the surgery. The surgery was successful, and his recovery was much more rapid and complete than the most optimistic expectations.
In mid-April, I suffered a second seizure, of about the same severity as the first one. This left my speech further impaired than it had been after my two strokes in 2024. But except for speech, I seemed to have no impairments from the seizures.
We traveled masked so as not to infect Charles.
I completed out-patient cardio rehab in March. Recovery from my Sept 30, 2024 open-heart surgery for valve replacement has been good. I get a fleeting pain once in a while, but all in all I’m glad I went through with the surgery and pleased with the results.
You never know who you’ll run into in Worcester.
The months of April-May-June-July were mainly taken up with decumulation tasks and yardwork. My blackberries did well. But I made only one cobbler and didn’t come close to picking all the berries. I lacked strength to do all the work required. Consequently…
…I did no stock/options trading until almost the end of May. Of course, that means I had almost no exposure to the wild market gyrations of Feb. and April.
The Berkshire woods looked a lot like our Ozarks woods.
We decided to get away for a while, and built an almost 4-week road trip in August around my 55-year high school reunion. We spent a few days in Rhode Island with friends for the reunion, then a week on Cape Cod that included excursions to Provincetown and Martha’s Vineyard, then two weeks in the Berkshires, just enjoying our resort, taking easy hikes, walking the resort grounds, and doing a few tourist things. On the return drive, we spent two days at the Columbus OH zoo, which Lynda had wanted to see for several years due to its connection with Jack Hanna.
We decided to drive to Lake Jackson, Texas in early October to visit Sara and her family. We hadn’t seen them since Thanksgiving 2024. We got to attend cross-country races and other things. It was an enjoyable trip, which we thought might be the last for te year. However, three more adventures awaited us.
Finally went to beautiful St. Lucia after years of dreaming.
In June, Charles attended a professional conference that included a keynote presentation about universities and slavery. That got him interested in where our black ancestry came from, and said, “We need to go to St. Lucia.” That’s been a dream of mine for years, to see the place my maternal grandmother grew up in. It turned out Thanksgiving was the best time, so we took our third plane trip of the year and spent seven days/six nights in Castries, using up all accumulated timeshare points (and some cash). It was a wonderful trip, one I’m planning to blog more about.
Charles had finally convinced Lynda that if we moved in a downsizing, it would be better if we moved to the Lake Jackson-Houston area rather than to Massachusetts. So we made plans to move in about a year. Then, a week after we got back from L.J., and house very close to Sara went up for sale. It was the perfect downsize for us. We made another road trip to L.J., saw the house, it looked just right, we put in an offer, and bought it.
So now our decumulation has turned into moving preparation. We took a U-Haul load on Dec 19 and stayed through Christmas. Now we are planning on moving for good around Feb. 1, 2026. I don’t want to be paying for two houses for too long.
So that’s our year. With all the trips and work, I put off having knee surgery, originally scheduled for Nov, then Dec, then Jan, until sometime after the move. I suspect it will be part of my 2027 story.
Also, I’ve said nothing about my writing activities. So stay tuned for another post in a couple of days to cover that.
The legacy books were once a part of my journey. They are all gone now.
For a long time, I thought, if I ever wrote my autobiography, it would be titled The Journey Was A Joy. But as started to write it, that seemed wrong. I thought that would instead be the name of the last chapter. As I thought about the journeys I have been on—spatial, physical, spiritual, professional, intellectual, avocational—I decided instead I would title it Tales Of A Vagabond. I’ve written the first six chapters of that.
I’m about to embark on a new chapter of the vagabond life. For a long time Lynda and I have talked about moving to be close to one of our children. The choices were Worcester, Massachusetts and Lake Jackson, Texas. The problem is, neither of them may be in their current locations for a long time. Either of them could pick up and move in a matter of a few years. Knowing that, we’ve been slow-walking our decumulation efforts, as readers of this blog will know. Our son in Worcester finally convinced Lynda that the better place for us to move was to Lake Jackson. I had been of that mind for some time.
The health journey is also a consideration.
A couple of weeks ago, a house across the street and two doors down from our daughter came up for sale. To make a long story short, we found the house to be perfect in size and location. Through a realtor we made an offer, came to an agreement with the seller, and are under contract to buy the house. Closing is scheduled for Dec. 8.
Monday, we met with a realtor (husband and wife team) in our house in Bella Vista. Within a day or two we will likely put her to work as our realtor, and get the house listed ASAP. We think it will show well (if we can get it at least somewhat more presentable) and hope it will sell reasonably quickly. Our time to move is between Dec 18-ish and April 1. I have knee replacement surgery scheduled for Jan 27, so it may not happen then depending on when we do make the move.
Interest journeys have been part of it, as writing became a part of my life.
Am I excited? No. The amount of work before us is massive. Slow walking isn’t going to get it done. The worst part will be leaving our church of almost 36 years. That will be hard.
We’ve been in this house for close to 24 years, and in this area since January 1991. That kind of stability probably negates the idea of me being a vagabond. But life isn’t defined only by your physical location. My life has included many other types of journeys.
If I live long enough, like into my nineties, it is likely that this won’t be the last move in the vagabond journey.
This dates from around 1906. I hope it transports ok.
Perhaps a few readers will recognize the title of this post at the last two lines of Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”. It was a poem I hated all through secondary school, as a progression of English teachers tried to convince us it was a suicide poem. I just couldn’t see it.
Still can’t.
But I can see how it is a near-end-of-life poem, as the poet-narrator contemplates he has miles to go yet that snowy evening, and miles yet to go in his life, yet is tired, both physically and socially tired.
I’m feeling that tiredness. No, I’m not suicidal nor am I longing for the end of life. But I know I have many fewer miles to go than I used to, especially after the health challenges of the last year and a half.
Two things brought this home to me recently. One is related to our ongoing efforts to decumulate. When we returned from our road trip to the East, I contacted a nearby cousin to whom I promised to give the old shadow box (pictured above) handed down to me from my paternal grandmother and dad. It displays photos of my great-grandparents, their five children who lived to adulthood, and a hairpiece, perhaps from the gr-grandparents wedding day. If so, the hairpiece is about 140 years old, and the shadow box was put together around 1905.
This has been in our possession since 1997 and displayed on our wall since 2002. I think it looks good there, but it’s time to pass it down to someone who will enjoy it for many more years than I have left.
May God bless these girls in what I hope will be a long life before them.
The second thing that made me once again realize the miles I have to go before I sleep are many fewer now than they once were happened in church Sunday. It was a special service with our English and Hispanic churches combined, and with elementary-aged kids in adult church with us. We took in new members, dedicated babies, and baptized new believers. I sat in the second row, and five elementary aged girls sat right in front of me.
Two families joined the church, people I haven’t met yet. Two families, each with two children who looked to be pre-school age. Seeing that made me think: these are the upcoming leaders of the church. Then I looked at the girls in front of me and thought: and these girls will be in the next group of leaders. That gave me both happiness and sadness. It’s kind of difficult to explain.
I withdrew from church leadership over twenty years ago, deciding it was time to allow others to step forward. In the ensuing years, I’ve refused a couple of invitations to step back in to leadership. At the same time, in the world at large, I more or less withdrew from modern culture. I watch almost no modern TV, don’t go to modern movies or listen to modern music. Don’t know the current stars of either except a few, by name and sight but not by performance, who are too ubiquitous to miss.
Out of church leadership. Out of modern culture. Both by choice. There’s a bit of sadness that brings, but also relief. It’s sad to get rid of that 120-year-old shadow box, but also a relief to be unburdened from one family heirloom, knowing it’s going to someone who will likely cherish it.
These two things made me think of the fewer miles I have to go. I suppose I’m a little sad about that but now awfully so. Time to enjoy the woods filling up with snow, and not worry about the miles.
Last month I resumed setting goals for the month. I had suspended this practice, which used to include progress, as my injuries and medical issues piled up in 2024 and continued in early 2025. But I decided to resume setting goals but not taking time to report progress on the prior month’s goals. So here are goals for June.
Begin editing Vol. 5 of the A Walk Through Holy Week Bible study series. Based on how the last couple of volumes went, it’s likely I’ll finish it this month.
Continue with work on computer files. This, for now, will mainly be checking scanned files to see if I’ve properly saved them and then get rid of the duplicate file.
Having done a good job on genealogy research this month, I’d like to continue it in June. This may be mainly organizing computer files, getting rid of duplicate material and superseded files, rather than new research.
Work some more on going through family photos. It would be nice to finish one of our four main families and send those photos off to the next family member who needs to deal with them.
Continue going through my father-in-law’s letter files. They are in approximate chronological order. I’m going through them one a day, from newest working backwards. At this rate it will take me a couple of years to get through them all.
Consolidate a few ideas I’ve had lately for future writing in the Documenting America series.
I have other things I’d like to accomplish, but these seem like enough to set for the month. Especially in consideration of the outdoor work I have to do in the blackberry patch.
So, in the interest of decumulation, I’m getting rid of books—even cutting deep into books I would like to keep and read someday, I’m getting rid of photographs. They don’t take as much space as books, but they are more numerous, are a burden rather than a blessing, and someday will be a burden to our kids. What else can and should go?
Every now and then I take a “tour” of the basement storeroom, looking for what should go next after we finish with current decumulation projects (mainly the photos). I see boxes of old Christmas decorations we haven’t put out for years. Same for other holidays. I see a couple of boxes of old camping equipment that I’m sure we will never use. At some point we’ll tackle them, but I don’t think the time is right just now.
The pants I wore to church yesterday seemed pretty big on me. I checked the size, and they are 42s, about 10 to 15 years old. I don’t know, but maybe I’ve lost enough weight that 42s are now too big and I should get rid of them. That, of course, brings up the whole subject of clothes and closets, which is a huge project. Do we tackle that en-masse or one garment at a time? I’ll be pondering that this week. It wasn’t too long ago that I stuck an old pair of 44 corduroys that were way too big in the donation pile and took them to Goodwill.
Last week, seated at my desk in The Dungeon, I looked at the shelf above my computer desk and saw it adorned with what I can only call “stuff.” Some of it is left over office supplies that I “might” use some day. Some is misc. things. Not quite sure what to do with those. But one thing I noticed is my trophies. These are things I got for delivering technical papers at engineering conferences. One year my paper was awarded best paper at the conference, and I received a trophy for that (actually two, since the first came with a typo and they sent another). The company I worked for then awarded me trophies for writing the papers, as a means of encouraging others to do the same.
Those trophies sat on a shelf at my office. When I retired over six years ago, I stuck them on the shelf in The Dungeon and more or less forgot about them. But what good are they doing me now? None. So I have decided they will go in the trash on Wednesday. The shelf above my computer desk will be a little barer, a little less decorated, but a little close to being ready to be moved somewhere when moving time comes.
One small decumulation step; one giant leap toward downsizing.
The infamous “Jacob’s Well photo”. One copy should be sufficient. The next generation will most likely toss it.
Of the many things our parents left us, or came to us in other ways, I think the most burdensome is photos.
Photos? Yes, photos. Those pesky little glossy things, or some matte finish, depicting people of long ago, houses once owned or lived in, vehicles once driven, and landscapes visited. No doubt those who left them to us thought, “What a treasure this is for our children (or grandchildren), to see great-aunt Matilda all dressed up for the derby. Oh how they will cherish them.”
No idea who these people are. Cool car, though.
Except nobody now alive ever met great-aunt Matilda. Only those who studied the family genealogy knows who she was and how she fits into the family relationships. And only those who ever will study genealogy will ever care.
This was the situation after a week’s worth of work on the 5,000.
Photos tend to add up. Just looking at the photos on Lynda’s side of the family, I estimate that we have 8,000 photos. No, I’m not exaggerating. That’s probably 3,000 from her dad’s side and 5,000 from her mom’s side. Just looking at her dad’s side, he was something of a hobbyist photographer. He inherited various family photos from his parents, who got at least some of them from their parents. He looked at those old photos, some as tiny at 2×3 inches, and had enlargements made; then multiple copies of the enlargements; then smaller copies having the developer play around with the tint and border and resolution. So one tiny old photo marked “Jacob’s Well” on the back was shown to be a photo of his grandfather’s family, showing two older men, one older woman, and seven children (the youngest not yet born)—some on horses, some standing on the rocky landscape.
Jacob’s Well is a feature in Clark County, Kansas, now incorporated into a park. Except we’ve visited the park—not every square inch of it, mind you—the landscape looks more like what you see at the family ranch in Logan Township, Meade County, Kansas. I could believe the photo is mis-labeled, except another family member in another branch that didn’t even know each other until 2015 has a copy of the exact same 2×3 photo and it is also labeled “Jacob’s Well.” What to do?
Is this photo a keeper? Surely it’s the Cheney family, but how do you identify the people? One of the older men is the father, Seth. The other is uncle Frank Best (most likely). The older woman is mother Sarah, the youngest child Rose, the older girl Cora. But which of the others are William, Clarence, James, and Walter? We can make an educated guess, based on size. But these people were all standing at least 20 yards away from the cameraman. There’s really no way of knowing who’s who.
The photo is from 1898, based on Charlie, the youngest child, being born in 1899. The question becomes: how important is it to keep this photo? And the multiple copies of the enlargement? And the multiple copies of different tints, borders, and resolutions?
This has come up now because another family member, who didn’t want the photos when Lynda’s dad died in 1996, has accused us of hoarding them because we didn’t drag them out every Thanksgiving and Christmas so that we could look at them “as a family.” Now he wants to look at them, divvy them up, and do so at a high school reunion in July. Even though we would have to impose on a relative for a venue. Even though Lynda was thinking she didn’t particularly want to go to the reunion. And actually, the demand to go through the photos included the 5,000 from the other side of the family. It is physically impossible. Reunions are times to see friends, swap stories, share meals. How will it be possible to sort through these photos and make decisions on their final resting place on a reunion weekend, even if you layover a couple of extra days? You can’t; it’s impossible. And some day, we’ll have to do the same with all the photos we took over the years.
So we are going through them. Album by album, box by box, folder by folder. After three weeks, we can see a little light at the end of the tunnel on the 3,000 (estimated) from the dad’s side, and have made some progress, at least to the point of knowing what we have, on the mom’s side. Duplicates have been identified and those we want removed from the overall collection as keepers. The albums have been checked and are currently being re-checked. Four other albums have been consolidated into two and are ready for re-checking. We are very close to boxing the non-keepers and shipping them to this family member with a note saying, “We’re so done with these; keep what you want, destroy the rest.” The other 5,000 will hopefully follow in about two more weeks.
Yes, destroy them. Our kids won’t want them. We don’t know anyone else’s kids that want them or even want to see them.
What was meant to be a blessing, and what served as a blessing to three or four generations and maybe 100 people, are now a burden. Let them die a peaceful death.
It’s so nice to have photos, isn’t it? Of family. Of the house. Of that big snowstorm in winter. Of the beautiful landscape scenes you see on summer vacation. Family Christmas celebration.
Then there’s the old photo album that your grandparents had and gave to your parents. Aunt Jane, great-aunt Elizabeth, photos of croquet games, unknown children. How great it is to have all that family history.
Until, that is, 50 years or more have passed. You are the only one still alive who remembers great-aunt Elizabeth, and you aren’t quite sure the woman you remember was actually great-aunt Elizabeth or a neighbor lady. You take stock after a cousin comes by with a box of photos and says, “Keep what your want and do what you want with the rest.” And you realize the box probably has 5,000 photos in it.
And you further realize you have similar boxes of photos of your own family, you dad’s family, your mom’s family, your spouse’s dad’s family, and your spouse’s mom’s family. Is it really possible that you have 20,000 photos in the house?
That’s where we’re at. We thinned out the book collection down to a manageable number for when we downsize. The photos come next. Digitize them, you say? That removes the stacks, but doesn’t really solve the problem. Someone, sometime, will have those digital files and wonder “who the heck are these people and why do I have these files?” No, they don’t take up a lot of physical space, but they are a type of clutter, a possession passed down that is not needed and probably not wanted. Something to leave to your children to make the decision on.
This is where we are. Probably 20,000 physical photos to do something with. At some point I’ll maybe count enough to see if my estimate is close.
