FISCHER: An unfortunate trip to Memory Lane

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

My family got an unexpected head-start on Spring Cleaning over the weekend.

I received a text on Friday that nefarious vandals had ransacked the old family acreage, which had been left vacant for the last several years as people moved out to new places to rest their heads and keep their stuff.

My home for most of my teenage years has long been little more than a glorified storage unit, mostly containing family possessions deemed too important to throw away, but not important enough to pack up as we all moved out.

Still, one would hope that those possessions would remain relatively safe out in the middle of nowhere.

Unfortunately, the warning about video surveillance, an obvious bluff if there ever was one, and the ever-present light on in the kitchen and utility room was not enough to deter adventurous intruders from ransacking, and maybe even squatting, on the unattended property.

It’s unclear what their motives or situation could have been. Bored teenagers looking for entertainment? Homeless scavengers passing through?

Going through the scattered mess left behind, it was difficult to ascertain a pattern that would indicate their mindset. Some things were definitely broken, but there was more that could have been broken that was left intact. Some things were definitely stolen, but there was more could have been stolen that was left behind.

More than anything else, they just made a mess. Whoever they were, and whatever their reasons, they certainly did a thorough job of making a disaster out of my old homestead. An impressive feat considering the state it was already in.

On the upside, most everything I would have considered valuable I had already long collected from the house. Over the last few years I’ve done some ransacking of my own, pulling out boxes of old books, toys, and VHS tapes to keep for nostalgia’s sake.

And, thankfully, the burglars seemed to have different priorities than me. In cleaning up the aftermath this weekend I even found some missing DVDs that I had been looking for. While I do have a few long-boxes of comic books unaccounted for, at least they weren’t books of any great value.

The intruders also didn’t seem to be particularly interested in the various photographs and scrapbooks that had been left behind in the house. While pages of photos chronicling my childhood were inexplicably scattered across the house, they were at least left relatively intact.

I can’t say I don’t feel some sense of violation. Just the idea of some stranger coming into a place I once lived and showing such utter disregard for my family’s property is tough to swallow.

On the other hand, it seems to have finally jumpstarted a long overdue family project of getting that dump cleaned out once and for all. It’s going to be an ongoing endeavor, but I’m looking forward to digging through the mess and seeing what else has been left behind. Already I’ve amassed a small collection of forgotten photos and assorted VHS tapes to find something to do with.

— Travis Fischer is a news writer for the Charles City Press and is gonna start looking into VHS-to-digital conversion tech.