Wadeing through a mess

Well, I got a shock this past week. My great uncle, E. Gray Wade, whom I’d visited a couple of weeks ago, died last Tuesday.

We were *just* there, visiting him. The first road trip after I got back. Two weeks after we visited, Daddy had a reunion in Monroe and he and Zippy picked him up to visit the hometown.

Even though I got the impression the trip itself was really rough, the trip down memory lane must have gone well for Gray. They visited the land, Don and some friends of Zippy.

Meanwhile, I stayed with Rally and Batgirl, for which I deserve a medal. If anyone thought Kocur was high maintenance, meet those two. Batgirl is more vocal about what she wants and I was regularly cussed in Dog.

Anyway, Z and Daddy arrived to return Gray to Lafayette on Sunday, intending to drive back Monday. But that morning, they found him collapsed by the bed.

By that afternoon, they took him to the ER and by evening he was admitted. The next morning, he died.

I was totally shocked; still can’t believe it. But I had to get out there for not only the funeral but also to clean up the mess, of which there was a HUGE one. I knew, because I’d just been there.

In some really bad logistical reasoning in order to get a decent plane fare (my mother freaked at me driving seven hours alone – go figure), I went to Orlando to meet Laurie. We flew Southwest from there tot NOLA and then rented a car.

Not the most effective method of getting from here to there, but since I leave tomorrow for Nicaragua from Orlando, I can just pick up the car from there on the way back, which will be after a camping trip with the boys but before a week in Reno.

If considering all that isn’t enough to keep my head spinning, then the mess we went through was.

Oh my God. Gray had lived in the house for 30 years and I am positive he never threw away a thing.

Friday, there were five of us cleaning, but Laurie had to leave Saturday morning.

I can’t believe how much Wade stuff I waded through. If Charles can get me the photos, I’ll post them, but holy God, it was amazing. We rented a 100’ construction Dumpster thing that held 12,000 pounds and filled it by Monday.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to be that discriminate. I know there are plenty of organizations that could have used the stuff and a ton of collectors who would have drooled over some of stuff we had hauled off, but we just didn’t have time to sit, sort and make phone calls to see if someone could come and pick up this pile or that one.

We did get three loads to Salvation Army, two to the food bank and two recycle runs, but everything else that was clutter went out.

I’m not talking the good stuff. The house is still furnished, complete with four fridges/ freezers and cable TV.

But the really good stuff was peppered all over the house. We just had to hunt for it.

That entailed me going through those 93 pairs of pants, pocket by pocket. Shirts by the scores – the first closet (of four, not counting all over the furniture) had two hanging each hanger.

Jackets worn by, I think, Joseph’s brothers. He got the coat of many colors, but I found the one with a pocket full of $2 bills, a diamond, two rings and other stuff I didn’t even know what was.

Money was everywhere. Not much, but many little stacks. Quarters here, some $2 bills there, $50 in a cookbook and $1 randomly in an envelope box.

But holy smokes, the money didn’t touch the booze. I knew the one fridge was filled with beer, and there’s a story there.

The AC broke right off and we offered the two service kids some booze. They thought we meant to have one with us right then and they said no, sorry, company rules forbid it. But when we said no, it’s to-go, and opened the fridge, you never saw four bigger eyes. They loaded down THREE coolers full and had a great weekend.

It wasn’t until after that, though, that we found the real stash. Laurie hit on the one hooch and literally spent hours pouring gin, vodka, Jack, rum and lots of stuff I never heard of down the drain.

Yes, it’s a crime – likely a capital offense in Louisiana – but what else can you do? Seriously? I don’t think the food bank accepts hard stuff. Not a good idea.

But even after that, we kept running into alcohol. In every room, literally. (And this is in addition to the four brewing kits that Zippy found.)

There was a mini-stash in the main work shed (mini both in the number of the big bottles and the size of about 10 other bottles) and another in the second storage room.

In the hall closet, along with the drapes ordered when Gray moved into the house 40 years ago but never installed, I found SIX gallons of wine, neatly double bagged in Wal-mart bags. The new logo, too, so it wasn’t that old, unlike the home brew (in IBC root beer bottles) that gathered dust or the Molson  bottles that predated Hockey Night in Canada.

The hall closet also yielded another surprise: a money bag that didn’t have money in it.

It’s an old-time money bag and I fully expected to find, well, money, in it. Maybe another little pile of Sacajewa dollars or another Kennedy half dollar. Maybe even another handful of WWII-era Japanese coins.

But no. It was the missing sawed-off shotgun, something I’ve never even seen. Gray had apparently hidden it from someone and then forgot about it, because it was one of the things he’d talked about, speculating that someone had stolen it.

In all, we accounted for all five guns. The sawed off shotgun surprised me, but I’d seen the bag so I knew something was in it, even if it wasn’t as marked. It was the .22 that scared the crap out of me because I didn’t know it was there.

I was going through a closet and picked up a couple of sheets and there’s this heavy, huge pistol just sitting on the shelf.

Loaded, of course.