Erling

28 May, 2020

Hello. It’s been awhile since I’ve checked in. I’ll get straight to the point of this article. A man named Erling.

After I had parked my truck at work, and was walking to the shop, I looked into the scrap metal dumpster. I look into that dumpster frequently to see if there might be something I can use in my basement machine shop. As I looked in yesterday I saw a little “parts” cabinet. The kind with a bunch of small plastic drawers for storing screws, nails and other such hardware. I opened a drawer and saw random junk. Upholstery tack, curtain brackets and such. Then I opened the large bottom drawer and saw a piece of paper, on which the words “ration card”, caught my eye. I then saw a photograph of a young woman and another of a young girl. It caught my interest because photographs don’t end up in drawers unless they have special meaning to someone. I was curious.

I picked that cabinet out of the dumpster and stuck it into the bed of my truck with the intention of looking through everything after work. I did just that and what a treasure I had found. I love old tools. Old tools were made so much better when people who knew how to make tools were in charge and not shareholders. When those old tools have the original owner’s initials or name on them they becom more precious to me. I’m a mechanic and I have spent a lot of my hard-earned money purchasing tools so I understand those old guys. I get sentimental when I look at an old pair of Starrett calipers with the initials “WJH” stamped into them. I wonder who that guy was, what his trade was, where he purchased the tool etc. The saying goes “purchase good tools and they’ll outlast you.” How true. Purchase quality tools, take care of them and they’ll last for generations.

I got home from work and took that little cabinet down to my shop. I found, in addition to the photographs, a fuel ration card from WWII, many paycheck stubs from 1945-1961, a chauffeur’s license, vehicle registrations, deposit slips, an assortment of keys, receipts from credit purchases and a lot of junk hardware. I learned the guy’s name, what he did for a living and where he lived in my town. His name was Erling and he was an appliance repairman. Learning his trade created, in my head at least, a bit of camaraderie.

I imagine he purchased this cabinet to keep in his service truck and then put it into his garage, or basement, when he retired. Maybe it was always at his home. I don’t know. I only know that a bit of a man’s story got tossed into a dumpster because someone thought it was trash. I think that tossing this little cabinet away is disrespectful to Erling and all he had done in his life. I feel like I owe it to the guy, from one blue collar tradesmen to another, to clean up that cabinet and preserve the things he thought were important to save. I will do just that.

I searched the internet using his full name and learned some things about Erling. He lived to be 80 years old, was married to the same woman for about 50 years, they had one child (a daughter) and he died twenty days after his wife had died. The two photographs in the little cabinet were of Erling’s daughter. One photo was her at about 3 or 4 years old and the other (guessing here) as a high school senior. Erling’s daughter is also deceased. My internet search also produced two photos of Erling and his wife (they look like church directory or, perhaps, wedding anniversary photos to me) and in both photographs they display genuine smiles. They were happy and it showed.

I don’t know the circumstances that led to Erling’s cabinet being in a scrap metal dumpster. Maybe someone who purchased his home after his death found it in a dusty corner. Maybe a distant family member was sorting through boxes of “stuff” that had been passed down and tossed it out as “junk.” Whatever the situation, Erling’s little cabinet is now safe in my basement. The documents are in varying degrees of decay. I don’t know if they can be saved, I’m a mechanic and not an archivist, but they will be photographed for posterity. I will clean the plastic drawers, straighten the bent cabinet and, if necessary, repaint it. Whatever documents I can preserve, along with the photographs of Erling’s daughter, will be placed in the bottom drawer where I found them. Maybe I’ll print this article and include it in the drawer so that when I’m gone this cabinet might mean something to the next person to find it.

I hope that when I’m gone my family will, at the very least, look through all of my things before throwing away anything. There may just be some little nuggets of my life tucked away in some innocuous little cabinet.