By Steve Cichon | steve@buffalostories.com | @stevebuffalo
There are two kinds of people: Those that save, and those that throw out. Me? Um, are you really asking? The problem is, I have bunches or really cool stuff that make other people jealous. Stuff that I don’t need, and would be happy to get rid of, until someone reminds me how great it is.
I really have a hard time watching TV shows like “Hoarders,” because I know I’m only a bad break in life away from being that way. Every piece of nonsense I own has a story, and a possible future use. Every once in a while, I get brave and do a little cleaning. I bring a few bags to the curb, a few bags to AMVETS, set aside another pile for future eBay sales.
As a junk collector of some renown, and having produced two books and millions of web hits to staffannouncer.com mostly through the efficacious use of my junk, I now not only find my own new junk, but have people bringing it to me. I’m like Oscar the Grouch… “I LOVE TRASH!!”
I use the pejorative junk, because that’s mostly what it is to most people. But just like some amazing people can turn utter refuse it amazing art, I can turn old magazines and newspapers and store receipts and slightly soiled napkins and other nonsense into memory joggers for people. I love it, but it’s dangerous. It’s like a heroin addict working in a methadone clinic.
I’m making light of it, but it really is a borderline problem. I have rules about what I allow myself to even look at, let alone buy. Paper stuff, as in two dimensional things are OK. And it has to be related to Buffalo. Local stuff only. These are all things that I can share with people on my website, and allow them to share in my love of my junk.
I’m slowly weeding out of my piles—err collection– anything that doesn’t fit into those categories. I have huge stamp, coin, and sports cards collections that someday I’ll get rid of… Doesn’t fit the profile, even though these collections date back to when I was 6 or 7 years old.
This was the stuff I wanted in 1st and 2nd grade. There was an antique store on Seneca Street near my Grandma Cichon’s house. Grandma Cichon, an unabashed garbage picker, junk collector, and total hoarder. Anyway, in the window of that antique shop, there was an Iroquois Beer light. It was $10, and I was saving up to buy it. I was 9 or 10. My grandmother bought me that light for Christmas that year. Major encouragement in junk collection. You losers were getting Transformers, GI Joes, and Barbie dolls. Me? Iroquois Beer lights. Old Buffalo stuff. I couldn’t have been more happy. Of course I still have it.
All this came to mind as I thought about the old Pepsi machine in the back of my garage.
I was 12 or 13 years old, and had $20 or $25 burning a hole in my pocket. I wanted something cool to spend it on, and *the* place to look for cool stuff, aside from SuperFlea, was the SwapSheet. Should you not know, this was a weekly newspaper filled with classified ads from all over Western New York.
I remind you that we lived in Orchard Park, when I found the very sparse ad (they charged by the word) that said something like “PEPSI MACHINE. $25. (Wilson)” That’s the Town of Wilson, waay up north in Niagara County. I called, and made arrangements. He still had the Pepsi machine. It was soon to be mine.
I can very clearly remember sitting on the school bus on my way to Orchard Park Middle School thinking how cool it was going to be to have a Pepsi machine in my room. It was going to be like Silver Spoons, where Ricky Schroeder had all those video games in his living room. There were so many questions I forgot to ask. I was picturing a tall machine where the front was a light box, with some vintage illuminated Pepsi logo on it. He said there was a light. It’s all I thought about for days. Not that I did math homework anyway, but I’m sure I didn’t then.
What made me want to write about this was thinking about my dad in all this. He was generally an impatient man, didn’t know how to get anywhere, terrible with directions, and not very mechanically inclined. There weren’t many times in my childhood that all these obstacles were overcome solely for my benefit, but getting this Pepsi machine was certainly one of those times. I know my ol’man was probably just as excited as I was about getting this thing as I was; it was the only way it could have happened.
I know we had to pull the back seats out of our 1985 nightwatch blue Dodge Caravan. This almost certainly involved cursing by the ol’man. We then had to drive from Orchard Park to a farm in Wilson. I know we spent at least an hour getting there, and got lost at least once. More cursing. We pulled up to the garage, and the guy opened the door…
I was terribly disappointed by the short, ugly not all-that-lit-up 1965 Pepsi machine of which I was about to take delivery. But I really couldn’t say no, especially after the long ride— So somehow, this heavy, molding barn smelling, one-time automated purveyor of ice cold soft drinks was loaded into the Caravan, and was driven back home to OP with the back hatch open.
I tried to fill it with the then-available 16 oz glass bottles, but they were too long, wouldn’t fit. The way the slots were rigged, you can’t put cans in the machine. It was made for obsolete 8 oz glass bottles. I had an ugly pop machine which I couldn’t fill with pop. Neither the coin mechanism nor cooling system worked. I had fun yanking them out and taking them apart, and dropping the weight of the beast by a little bit, anyway. There wasn’t much else I could do it with it.
It was a cool enough thing to have in your room, a Pepsi machine, even if it was a dumb disappointing one. It was in my room until I moved out of my parents’ house. For the last dozen years, it’s sat in the back on garage, and I’ve given it very little thought.
Until today. Trying to be droll in explaining on Facebook that I have too much junk, I mentioned I even have an old Pepsi machine sitting in my garage. This was meant to leave people with a sense of, “My goodness! What massive amounts of total crap this guy has!”
Instead, it was met with, “How cool! Can I be you friend because you have a Pepsi Machine? I will buy it from you for millions of dollars!”
First of all, where were you people when I was in middle and high school and needed Pepsi machine friends. But second, it made me think, maybe for the first time ever, as this clunker as something more than a boat anchor and a net negative and drag on my life.
Yesterday, I probably would have given it to someone to take it out of my garage, which would have made my wife immeasurably happy.
But just like that, today, it’s a very nostalgic piece intertwined with my relationship with my dad, my relationship with junk collecting, and something I’m trying to figure out how to get restored to at least look (and smell) good.
It’s the problem with being someone who keeps things. When you want to get rid of something, you have to strike while the iron is hot. Because it doesn’t take much to decide that something you were just ready to get rid of has all the sudden become a treasured heirloom.