Proof That Stories Matter More Than Things
My wife likes to say I am a collector of things, to which I disagree. My position is that a serious collector of things would have lots of things. A serious collector of things is way more disciplined and organized in approach as to the types of things they collect. A collector has specific things of value that he specializes in versus, say, the junk dealer who collects many things of possibly lesser value and is also nothing like me.
I currently only have a few interesting items from our journey, a few small unique rocks from places I can’t recall, a fish knife found beneath a bush along the banks of the Salmon River in Idaho, a small piece of fossilized wood from a lake in North Dakota, a chunk of driftwood from a beach along the Oregon coast, a deer antler found while riding bikes along a highway in southwest Texas, a rusty old horseshoe I found hanging on a branch in a random tree in Utah. The last thing I found and the thrust of this disagreement was a plastic toy soldier.
These items aren’t stored in some fancy cabinet but are scattered about our travel rig in places ranging from my toolbox, the compartment in the door beside the driver’s seat, behind the driver’s seat, occasionally my pants pocket, in a storage box in the trailer, and sometimes just on the floorboard of the old truck where I toss them.
The relevance to this disagreement began with my latest addition to my stuff that I found while I was walking our dog along a dirt road just outside a small beachside community in Northern California.
I looked down and saw a small plastic toy soldier lying in the grassy weeds, immediately considering it worthy of an addition to my short list of important things. As it was lying there, I observed that his head was turned to the side and his arms straight out extended over his head as if he landed there from a fall. It appeared he had been there for quite some time and based on the position of the arms and hands over his head, I surmised that he was originally accessorized as a toy airborne paratrooper who had lost his parachute. I reached down, picked him up, and carefully turned his head on a swivel back and forth, then slightly moved his arms and legs up and down to make sure everything worked. He was wearing an olive green military-issue combat uniform with his pants tucked into his black boots and a red beret hat, which I found as a slight contradiction assuming that if he were in fact jumping out of an airplane that he would be wearing a helmet strapped to his head versus a soft stylish hat. He had a black vest with important stuff secured in attached pouches, binoculars strapped to his chest, and a side arm of unknown caliber tightly holstered to his left hip and tied to his left leg. He wore black gloves and had a tattoo of something that I really couldn’t make out on his left forearm, but likely a badge worn proudly from an experience doing something heroic. His face was clean-shaven with sharp jaw lines making him appear really fit. I scanned the area around him looking to see any signs of his comrades or other accessories strewn nearby then carefully placed the plastic toy soldier in my pants pocket for security, not nearly giving him the honor and respect he so deserved.
After lunch, we drove a short distance to an RV park and pulled around to where the assigned site was located next to a small older trailer. A little boy, maybe 7 with buzz-cut blonde hair, dirt all around his mouth, a tank top tee shirt, and pee-stained wet pants. stood to watch as we maneuvered the rig into place. As we got out to set up the trailer, we heard a shrill from inside the trailer telling Austin to stay out of the way.
“Hello,” he said to us. We said hello back and continued on prepping the rig and campsite. Later, as we were working around our trailer he informed us that this was their new trailer as he pointed to the rickety old 20-foot camper with lots of missing accessories and lots of duct tape. I replied, “what a nice trailer, do you like it?” “Very much,” he answered with a proud smile.
I would later hear him greeting other folks who were walking by saying hello, telling one young mother with a stroller that he liked her babies, and on another occasion telling an owner that he liked their dog.
We would spend each day traveling away from camp to places to sightsee, have lunches, and dinner only to return to see Austin curiously playing alone around his trailer. At one point we watched in amazement as he squatted to see our grey water from our sink pour from the pipe beneath the trailer to the bucket below our trailer, hoping that his curiosity would stop there.
As we packed up to leave on the third day, I placed the plastic toy soldier inside a zip lock bag along with a note written on a postcard saved from the A’le’ Inn diner in Rachel, NV. The note and toy soldier are in the following photo.
I placed it next to the utility pole between our camps knowing confidently that this curious little boy would happen upon it. Together this little boy and plastic toy soldier will make a much better team, and besides, I am no collector of things, only stories.
