THE OTHER DAY I found myself polishing the hardware on my den desk and last night since I stayed up all night I found myself cleaning out the junk drawer which is the middle drawer. A little background on the desk here as it is well over a hundred years old. It belonged to a long time lawyer in town who was an uncle to a friend of mine. When the uncle died he willed it to my buddy who held on to it for a few years but when he moved he just didn’t have a place for it. I volunteered to give the desk a good home and so thirty some years ago it found a place in my den.

Ten years later I got one of them big monitors for my computer and the once big desk top was not big enough so I added a sheet of maple and stained it up and put it on top of the desk top. I had to shorten it a tad but it is still 4x7 feet and I tucked a file cabinet under the far corner to support it. This is the desk I talk about where Duncan goes behind and makes his hideout. If you are looking for a left shoe odds are you will find it there. There are three drawers down the right side and two drawers down the left, one of them being double high as it was built as a place to store paper files. Over the course of time all my kids received desk drawer to put their "Good Stuff" in and to this day they still have stuff in the drawers. The top right drawer is mine and the center drawer has become the "Junk Drawer"

Back several years ago when the last time we remodeled the kitchen the "Junk Drawer" was removed and replaced with second towel drawer, I have never pulled a towel out of that drawer as in my mind it is still the "Junk Drawer." Now the "Junk Drawer" in the desk has a mess of everything in it. I was going to say I cleaned it but it was more like I went through and sorted it. Nothing really made it to the garbage can as it was "All good stuff" in there. 12 inch wood rulers and a assortment of erasers won at school carnivals. Can’t remember the last time I used pencil and had to use an eraser but I know where one or ten are if I need them. Screws, washers, bolts and little hand tools used to put screws together on desk chairs and TV cabinets. Tiny plastic parts bags of parts that were bought and then did not fit. Files and markers and tiny screwdriver's kits and exato knifes. Razor blade packs missing just one blade and 9-volt smoke alarm batteries.

Seed packets with the corners clipped off but sealed with tape and of course scotch tape and paper clips and rubber bands, Band-Aids and post it notes. For some reason bottom caps with winning numbers inside long since expired. Forgotten usb cables for phones long gone and still some hard floppy disks, but hey I paid ten bucks for them! A mini flashlight that does not work and me getting sidetracked trying to get it to work. Missing dice for a game and a tattered deck of cribbage cards. Cigarette lighters and pipe cleaners and an empty box of pipe filters. Some forever stamps that I guess are still good and business cards from places long closed. The biggest thing and the one thing I found the most of were a lot of memories so I left the stuff in the "Junk Drawer" along with the memories and just closed it. I marked it down on the Honey Do List as being complete and time well spent here at Lake Iwanttobethere

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