Searching for the ‘Holy Grail’ in a junk drawer

I miss many things with which I grew up. I miss my jewelry box, the one that played music whenever it was opened. I miss my roller skates, the ones that I had to use a key to tighten them to my shoes. I miss my old barn boots, the ones that I could walk through deep puddles and stay completely dry. I miss my old green bicycle, the one that rattled as I rode down the hay alley only to discover pieces of hay bales which could be piled up to enable me to make perilous jumps at the amazing height of two inches or more! I miss my Slinky, the one that I could never make go down the stairs as it did on TV.

What I miss most is our family’s junk drawer. It was located in our back hall and was huge! It was at least three-feet deep (actually, one-foot deep) and was as big as a bathtub (actually, more like a suitcase). As a child, I would stand on a kitchen chair and peer into this accidental time capsule in order to discover treasures unknown to the rest of the world.

If I needed an extra quarter or nickel, it could be found in the junk drawer. If the kitchen table was wobbly, a washer or two could be found and quickly glued to the bottom of the table leg. Broken number two pencils and dried out ballpoint pens all found their way to the junk drawer. Wheels from Tonka trucks were in abundance as well as unworkable engines from my oldest brother’s model airplanes.

The most challenging item in the junk drawer was my Slinky. When it was new, my brothers stretched and twisted the Slinky all while assuring me that when they let it go, it would return to its original shape. They let go but the Slinky failed to do what the television ad promised. My Slinky had an entirely new look, tangled and unkept!

I attempted to untangle it back into its original shape. I twisted, turned and pulled on the magical spiral of metal to no avail. In frustration, I added my doomed Slinky to the cords, hay bale twine and frayed shoe strings that resided in the junk drawer. Two years later, while my Slinky rested in the abyss of the junk drawer along with cords, twine, and shoelaces that had attached themselves to the metal wonder, met their demise: my mother’s wrath along with a trip to the burn barrel.

After we were married and I had an opportunity to place items in my home exactly where I wanted, I vowed never to have a junk drawer. My philosophy was, “If it can reside in a junk drawer, then it’s junk and I don’t need junk.”

In our first apartment, which was the upstairs of a 100-year-old house, I found it easy not to have a “junk drawer” because we had no drawers whatsoever. The bathroom and kitchen were located in two converted over-sized closets in which sinks and stoves were far more important than any type of cabinet. I stored kitchen towels in my dresser sock drawer, paper clips in my make-up bag and a spatula in the bedroom closet.

When we finally found ourselves in a house with drawers, my heredity took over and I found myself with a junk drawer. In our first home, I had one junk drawer and 10 other drawers, but in our present home, I have four junk drawers out of the 42 drawers in my kitchen. I updated my vow and decided that I could dedicate 10 percent of my drawers to junk.

I find the contents of my junk drawers very comforting. I have a wealth of the rubber bands because I have been collecting rubber bands for years! From around the newspapers, bundles of mail, and most recently, around asparagus and I don’t even like asparagus, but I love the bright blue rubber bands. The rubber bands are not all together in one plastic bag or even in one drawer. I feel that rubber bands need to be divided between the drawers so that I always find one in the first drawer that I look. It saves me so much time and also gives me a great reason to have my rubber bands in total disarray.

If I dig deeper, I can find every screwdriver that we have ever owned. Every time that Pastor Pete has shouted, “OK, who took the screwdriver?,” I go to the hardware store and add one more to my collection. I have tiny screwdrivers, broken screwdrivers, cheap screwdrivers and useless screwdrivers all taking space in my junk drawers.

I seem to collect the same things that my mother did: a single knitting needle, clothespins, putty knife, screws, bolts, nails, old glasses and canceled postage stamps. I do find solace knowing that I have carried on the family tradition of owning at least one, half-filled S&H Green Stamp book.

When I contemplate on my need for a junk drawer, I realize that it’s for the “thrill of the search.” Knowing that I am going to reach back into my own history that lies hidden in the far corners of the drawers excites me. Who knows what I may find?  A cookie cutter from a Christmas long ago? Charging cords from every cell phone that I have ever owned? Or maybe I will find the “Holy Grail”: an unstretched, still in the box, untangled Slinky.