I found my first boat which was of course a Glasspar, about 12 years ago. I had many other hobbies at the time but little did I know they would all take a back seat to boating in the near future. My garage was loaded with boxes of military collectibles, antique cameras, vintage this and vintage that, basically all sorts of stuff that really did me no good on a daily basis.

As I started getting more and more interested in Glasspar boats and boating in general, I found that I did not have enough room to store everything. My garage had been on a diet it seemed because it appeared to be getting much smaller. I finally moved to a new home on a 2.65 acre parcel and found no more room in the garage than I had in the old place. Strange, the property got much bigger but the garage was the same size! It's funny how we need to protect our "valuables" from the elements.

I finally decided to start selling nick-nacks on ebay to make room for my boating stuff in the garage or possibly . . . . even a car. I made several big trips through the garage and got rid of tons of stuff and made a few bucks along the way but the garage seemed to get even smaller. I was totally perplexed and finally gave in and started building a four car (or boat) barn out back that I could call my shop. As the siding and roof went up, I started moving boating and vintage car stuff in. Once I had all that type of junk in the barn, I went back to work on the garage. I could have sworn the walls were closing in on me as I even started to throw stuff away! Nothing seemed to work in the process of getting more room in the garage.

One time I even got extremely mad after tripping over something in the garage and I almost broke my noodle . . . I did break my pride because my kids saw me take the tumble and thought it was quite funny. I had had enough of all of this and took a whole truck load to the dump and finally had room to sweep the garage out. Wow, there really was a cement floor under all that!

I thought I was finally making progress and went out to the garage one day after work, low and behold, the floor was missing. Well, the floor wasn't really missing but I sure couldn't see it any more. I thought to myself that the trips to the dump must have been a bad mental trip from some hot chilly or maybe it was all just a dream.

Just about this time I was ready to give up and one of my sons brought a box of his stuff out to the garage from his bedroom. I asked him what it was and he said it was stuff he didn’t want anymore. I told him to take it to the dumpster and his mother stopped him on the way. After my wife got a look at the stuff in the box . . . to the garage it went! I had finally figured it out . . . it wasn't my stuff I was throwing out and tripping over, it was the result of my wife and three kids! I kind of thought that some of that stuff seemed unfamiliar to me but I was having fun cleaning.

I finally resolved to keeping my stuff in the barn and staying out of the garage. The idea of keeping all that stuff makes me wonder what will happen to it if I get hit by a bus some day. Will people remember me by what I had or what they got after I'm gone, or will they remember me by my contribution to society? All that pondering reminded me of a bad joke . . . I'll finish this blog post with that bad joke:

There was a very rich man who spent a life of selfishness never allowing his family to spend any of his money. On his deathbed, the relatives gathered around like hawks waiting to see if he would give money or stuff away before he died as he had no will. Just before he breathed his last, he called everyone around his bed and told them "I liquidated all my assets and put all my money in a big box in the attic, when I die I'm going to grab that box on my way up to heaven". After the man died, his wife went up to the attic and found the box full of money. With a small grin, she said "I told that old fool he should have put this box in the basement!"