Collecting old junk
I believe I might have crossed a line, a line that is somewhere down the road to featuring on an episode of hoarders. I have started to collect junk off the side of the road, for which I have no conceivable use (not yet, but that is the basic symptom of hoarding is it not?).
There is a house in my street, or actually the back of a house that faces the street behind on my street, that is three quarters of the way to derelict. Last Wednesday when I was working from home I went for a walk at lunch time up to the local supermarket, and at the back of this house there was a pile of junk on the footpath, with a sign up letting us know it was free to all. And I found this.
It is an old preserving steriliser – a Fowler’s Vacola to be exact. It has the old thermometer holder on the side.
Inside it were these – jar lids and clamps. Too bad there were no jars as well, because I like old preserving jars. And I like them even better when they are full of stewed quinces.
In the bottom, where it is most rusty, is this weird bit that lifts up.
Like I said, I don’t know exactly what I am going to do with it. One day when I live in a ramshackle house in the country, rather than an apartment in the city, it might find its place.
On the weekend I washed it and sprayed it with WD40, to settle the rust, and I even gathered up Rust Killer paint charts from the hardware store as I walked by, because I think I shall just paint it to deal with the rusty bottom and turn it into a storage bucket for, well, I don’t know. Something.
I do quite like finding and restoring old things, where time and space permits. It has within it traces of redemption.