Passage I

PROSE FICTION: This passage is adapted from the novel Second Hand by Michael Zadoorian (©2000 by Michael Zadoorian).

I sleep in until about ten-thirty, which is unusual for me. It's a little late to go junking, but I definitely want to open up the store. I feel surprisingly okay. I'm looking forward to work. I shave, shower, get dressed, grab a toaster pastry, and head out the door to work

At work, nothing happens. No one comes in. I just sit there.

Finally, at about three-o'clock, this guy walks in, not the kind of guy I usually get in here, with an expensive-looking overcoat and a tie.

"How much is that old Emerson radio up there?" he says, pointing to one of the ancient radios that line the ceiling of my shop.

"Those aren't for sale," I say. "None of the radios are for sale." This is not for any big reason, it's just because radios from the Fifties and Sixties are some-thing I still like to collect. It's not like they're worth that much. These just look kind of neat up there.

He looks disappointed, then he says, "I'll give you a hundred for it."

My heart rises, then I remember its history. Half the tubes are missing, the others toasted. I just like looking at the things, I'm not really much for fixing them up. "It's really not in working condition," I say.

"I don't care. I just want it. One twenty-five?"

The guy's practically pleading with me. Now maybe I'm a dope who doesn't know his radios (which I am), but I start to think I am looking at someone who just really wants this object. I can see it in him. Serious collectors always maintain their distance, like they couldn't care less if you sell them something. They always need to have the upper hand.

"Okay," I say to the guy. "But it doesn't work. Just so you know that."

He's smiling like a maniac by this time. "It's okay, really."

This is a rare occurrence. No one ever comes in here and offers me a lot of money for anything. There are plenty of weeks when I don't make one hundred and twenty-five dollars. Despite the cash, it makes me feel good to see Someone really want Something just for the beauty of it.

"Do you collect old radios?" I say, after I box up the Emerson and collect the cash. I'm hoping he doesn't tell me that I just sold him a rare prototype worth thousands.

"No. My mom and dad had one just like it when l was a kid. I've never seen another one like it until today."

This makes me even gladder that I sold it to him. This is something I have experienced myself, wanting something because it reminded me of my childhood. This is a strange thing about people. We own something as children, then as adults we are willing to buy it again for about a hundred times the original cost. We think we're buying back our youth or our innocence or some-thing like that, but what we're really buying back is our ignorance. We want to remember a time when we didn't know so much.

There's a guy in California who runs a junk museum. That's not what he calls it, but that's what it is. The purpose of the museum is to have people see things that spark intense memories of their lives. Here's what happens: You re strolling around, taking in every-thing, then suddenly—pow!—you see a juice glass just like the one you had when you were six years old. There is no doubt. You know just as you know your name that it is just like your favorite juice glass.

It is a slap in the cerebrum. This object that was so important to you at one time of your life had so completely disappeared from conscious thought, been so thoroughly buried, you hadn't even thought about it in decades. Memories, feelings, ideas, fears from that time return to you. And it doesn't have to be a juice glass, it can be anything—a radio, a Strawberry Shortcake lunch box, an old Ferrante & Teicher LP, spaceship bedroom curtains, anything.

These epiphanies, these occasions of shattering remembrance, are the junk moments of our lives, memory detritus that we have scattered and stashed in the musty, bent-corner cardboard folds of our brains.

It's quite a mess there in our attics. Things get chipped, they fade and shrink, crumble and yellow. But these things that seem insignificant are what compose our personal histories. That's why we need junk stores. As time passes, we realize those things we ignored have become valuable. We must revisit them, give them life again. That's what my store is about.

I remember something from college, Wordsworth or one of those guys, talking about "spots of time," moments of experience when something ordinary becomes significant. That's what junk is for me, finding these little spots of time, only they're things that you can hold in your hand, things that you can find everywhere. You just need to know where to look.