One thing Hector always remembers is that the things he picks up belonged to people and the people have life stories worth remembering. He is a big fan of junk and the stories that come with it. He has been known to ask questions about things that catch his eye, and with the client’s permission he will often keep stuff they want gone. On a quick trip back to his house to hug his baby boy and bring his pregnant wife lunch, he shows me some of the treasures he has pulled from the trash. In his living room are two sexy gray leather club chairs rescued from a removal job at the Austrian consulate general’s office on tony Michigan Avenue. His kitchen island countertop is high-end black butterfly granite saved from a construction job clean out. We head down to his basement and he shows me hundreds of baseball cards he pulled from one job. He has a box of beautiful stopwatches. He loves the tales behind each item and its original owner. He has a whole bookshelf in the basement taken up by boxes of autographs. It is an eclectic mix including Mel Brooks, Bob Barker, Buddy Ebsen, Barbra Streisand, Red Buttons, Jim Carrey, Barry Williams, Kenneth Tobey, Tim Matheson, and MC Hammer. It all came from a garage clean out of an older couple. Hector was amazed at what the husband had amassed. “This took a lifetime, you know?” Hector never saw the man, only his wife and son. Apparently she was fed up with her husband’s hobby and talked him into getting rid of it all. “He was fascinated about Hollywood. We found Hollywood contracts, canceled checks from producers. I told the son, I want to meet your father, but he said no. There was something weird about it. I got the sense there was some depression going on.”
We head out to his garage, which Hector knows is in need of a junk intervention. The original plan was for his wife to sell some of the stuff online, but Hector III arrived, and now Jacob is on the way. So for now, there are stacks of items like a five-foot gumball machine. Hector relays the backstory on each piece he has saved. His garage is a bit of a junk museum, and he is the curator. “I’m gonna show you something really cool.” He grabs a bag and pulls out some fantastically ornate sequined glitzy gowns. The story behind the frocks is a reminder why not all junk is created equal.
He got a call from a woman who was moving her elderly parents from Chicago to the East Coast. Their doctors suggested they would fare better close to family. It was a big job. “We cleared the house, like eight Dumpsters,” he remembers. The final bill was $3,600. All through the work, Hector noticed the older couple were watching his team and not saying anything. “Here’s this little old lady and old man sitting there and they’re just quiet and minding their own business. I’m cleaning out the attic and I’m coming across all these costumes, stage costumes, pictures. I found this picture. It was the most beautiful lady. She was in her twenties. She was gorgeous. I brought this down. I told the guy, I’m like, ‘Sir, you wife’s pretty now but she was hot back then.’ He was like, ‘Oh, yeah. She was a looker. She was a good-looking girl.’ And he’s like, ‘You know, she was a jazz singer.’ And then we sat there and started talking. She was like, ‘I’m going to be on channel eleven tonight.’ And I’m like, ‘Really?’ And she goes, ‘Yeah. They’re going to interview me.’”
Because he stopped to talk and to listen to the quiet elderly couple, Hector discovered he was cleaning out the house of Chicago jazz legends Eddie and Geraldine de Haas. Geraldine was described by the Chicago Tribune as the “first lady of Chicago Jazz.” Her husband was a bass player of great note who performed with Chet Baker, Roy Haynes, and Miles Davis. Geraldine Bey started her career as a smooth alto jazz singer with her siblings in a trio called Andy and the Bey Sisters. They toured all across Europe and released three albums. They had regular gigs at some of the legendary jazz clubs, including the Blue Note (where, Geraldine says, Marlon Brando hit on her). Her brother, Andy Bey, had a late-in-life second act as a solo artist while Geraldine settled in Chicago and made it her business to keep jazz coursing through the city. She established the South Shore Jazz Festival. She went on to save a local cultural center, and she created the Duke Ellington celebration in the heart of the city that went on to become the Chicago Jazz Festival. Before they left Chicago they were honored with a big celebration by some of the city’s most famous musicians. It was covered by the local news with great reverence.
By the time Hector got to the house the most precious items had already been donated to a jazz museum. “The daughter said, ‘Hector. Take what you want, because if it’s in there, don’t even tell me. We’ve already given the jazz museum enough.’ So, I got a chance to get out those costumes.” So what is a five-foot, ten-inch former marine going to do with a petite jazz diva’s stage gowns? He has no idea, but to him they seemed too special—Mrs. de Haas seemed too special—to throw them away. “I don’t know what to do with them. I think someone would appreciate them, you know?” That’s the tricky thing about junk and junk removal; it all meant something to someone at one time.
He recently found himself at a moral crossroads. Hector showed up for a job and realized he was removing the belongings of a very famous Chicago basketball player. The player had gone through a bitter divorce, had just remarried an actress, and now his ex-wife decided to just chuck all the belongings of the house she got in the settlement. Signed photographs with other superstar players. A college jersey. Thousands of dollars worth of sneakers. Hector tried to contact the player to see if he wanted it all back but was blown off by the handlers. He is struggling with the idea of selling it. “This is worth a lot of money, you know. It could mean something for my family.” Last time I spoke to him he was still deciding what to do. He was particularly bothered by what to do with all the photos of the man’s family because to Hector family is everything.
Hector’s love of the past and love of country is fueled in part by his family’s history. After a few long, dirty days, Hector takes me to the bar he used to own on the South Side. It is part of who he is and his family’s story. There is one noticeable thing about this bar and its clientele. It is an accent that I’m sure only exists in the 234 square miles that comprise Chicago. When the older fellas at the bar talk, you hear the flat Chicago A and the stubby-sounding D for the TH diphthong, as in “da Bears.” The voices are also laced with a Mexican accent and cadence. It’s a mash up of two distinct sounds that support the other’s quirkiness. It was strange to the point of distracting, but clearly everyone in the bar was used to it. Many of these guys had worked with Hector’s father in the steel mills when they were pioneers.
His father, Hector Sr., was one of twelve children who worked on a farm in Texas. “That was back in the time when they were exploited. ‘We’ll pay you. Just pay you enough to eat.’ That kept my aunts and uncles out of school. They don’t know any better. My uncle Art came to Chicago and found work in the steel mills and called back. So, my grandpa just took a chance.”
By the 1950s Chicago’s West Side had become a beacon for Tejanos like the Caballero family.5 Mexicans were successful in the steel mills and became an important part of the Steel Workers Union.6 Hector’s father, uncles, and the local fellows at the bar were among those men. “I am so proud of where my family came from. I go to Mexico a lot. It’s part of my heritage or history, but one thing that my dad has taught us, not really in words, but in his actions. You’ve got to understand why our ancestors left [and] came to this great nation. The opportunities here are amazing. It’s all what you make of it. It’s not really opportunity. It’s acknowledgment of opportunity.”
Hector decided to seize the opportunity to start a business hauling junk. Junk has him living the dream. “It’s an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay and it’s not bad money. Of course I want to get bigger, but I don’t want to be huge. As you know, time is everything. I have time to wake up and have breakfast with my wife and then wake up my kid. Got to go, kick ass for a couple of hours, come home, and then I do a job the next day. It’s just the coolest every day.”
Well, not every day. One job in particular haunted him for a week. He filled two thirty-two-yard Dumpsters and thr
ee fifteen-yard trucks and let the scrappers have the rest. It started out with a phone call from a woman who said her mother owned an antique store and that Hector could keep any of the “antiques” he removed. It was the old bait and switch.
“All donateables first, household items . . . and then trash in the back,” Hector tells the guys he’s picked up for work today. They were all wearing the red, white, and blue Junk Vets shirts and so was I. One fellow was quiet but knowing, a slim, blond young man, Eric, who wants to chat about Monsanto and its genetically modified seeds. He listens to a lot of NPR and plans on attending a protest that his friend posted about on Facebook. He has a sort of lonely look, the kind that inspired our waitress at lunch one day to give him a free cookie—no one else, just him. The other fellow barely said a word. They were both in recovery and recommended by Hector’s friend for this day of work where no one would be home. They could work at their own pace.
The woman opened the back door to let Hector into her mother’s home. “My brother was going to help, but no . . .” She waves Hector toward the stairs to the basement as her voice trails off. Hanging on the heavily wallpapered stairwell were faded family photos from the early 1970s, judging by the width of the gentleman’s lapels and the length of his sideburns. She won’t go down there anymore. Really, she can’t. There is a mountain of stuff at the landing. The basement was filled to the ceiling, which was a little over seven feet tall. The room was the length of the house, about fifty feet long and back about twenty feet deep. Hector had to climb over the top of the mound to see where the mass ended. He slipped and slid. It was a little bit like watching a kid climb up a snowy hill. He had to dodge chairs, wicker magazine holders, bags, and bins holding who knows what.
“This really shouldn’t be legal,” Eric said under his breath.
As for the antiques? Well, the woman owned more of a curiosity shop and the entire inventory was upstairs in the living room. Hector called for a Dumpster—a big one.
“It’s all gotta go. I totally gotta disconnect. I just can’t . . .” The woman’s voice trailed off again as she wrung her hands. She seemed unable to complete a thought. She was becoming more and more emotional as she paced around near the door. Hector knew in his heart she didn’t mean everything. After a quick conversation with her he told us to keep on the lookout for Bibles, wedding albums, and any important papers.
Hector explained why you have to have a little talk with clients before diving in: “You have to have communication skills with people because you’re in their house and you’re going through their life, you know? You can’t just be some straight-faced, no-personality guy and go in there like, ‘OK. I’ll take . . . ’ You’ve got to communicate with them and really connect with them and take their stuff out. A lot of people have lost their parents and you’re watching them crying as you’re taking their stuff out. We’re the final guys in the final process of life. This is it.”
Any thoughts about things being salvageable or donateable disappeared when it was clear that the bottom layer of the pile was soaked. There was water damage on almost everything. In some ways it made the job easier. This was a bag-and-toss job. Everyone gloved up and put on facemasks and started to fill heavy-duty contractor bags. We stuffed and stuffed and stuffed and started a conveyer line to get the loads out of the basement, up the stairs, to the yard, and into the Dumpster.
Going through the junk mountain was a bit of urban archaeology. The excavation revealed details of this family. As I placed items in the bags, I felt like I was watching someone’s life in reverse. The outer layer consisted of the necessities of growing old, such as walkers, bedpans, and crutches. Next was a layer of toys of a variety and vintage suggesting they belonged to a grandchild, circa 1990s. A few more layers in revealed the good times when this family had money for family vacations to Jamaica and brought back straw purses and hats. Their luggage was cardinal red. There were citations for best employee. There was a big yard sale sign. Hector referred to this process as “peeling the onion.” He meant that going through the many layers you find out about the people but initially I thought it was because this process could make you cry. Both are true. He said in most clean outs he can identify what life-changing event triggered the accumulation. The trigger is whatever item is found at the very end of the job. It could be an obituary announcement or a bassinet or a wedding invitation.
Looking around the house, it was a place that once held a lot of love and laughs. There were funny little signs here and there, the kind you would find at a church crafts fair. In the kitchen was a plaque that read “One nice person lives here. One old grouch.” Close by was another sign that said, “Your warmth radiates onto all others around you.” There were faded wallet-sized school pictures of little children on the refrigerator. On the wall right by the back door was a cutesy pink-and-white wall hanging, two rectangles held together by ribbon. The lettering was a swirly script and the sign said, “Eat Like No One Is Watching. Shop Like the Bill Will Never Come.” The sign helped make sense of what had been going on in that house. The over-collecting of calories and debt bares a striking resemble to the accumulation of stuff. A little is not so bad, but a lot can create distress. Seize the day can go wrong.
In the basement we did find a Bible and some wedding pictures, and we put them all aside. “Making progress,” whispers Eric. “It is still nasty.” Nasty was right. It was right around that point that I noticed the rat traps in the house and decided to do the rest of my reporting from outside. The Dumpster was nearly full. There was an enormous teddy bear near the top. You could see the furry feet sticking up over the edge. The neighbors watched through their windows and expressed concerned that leaving the Dumpster overnight would lead to some unsavory Dumpster diving.
By the end of the first day we could see the floor. The back wall was now visible. There was a full bar back there. Clearly this had been a boom-boom basement party room at one point. The very last things we found against the wall, the center or bulb of the onion, as Hector called it? Photos. Books and books of family baby pictures. Did starting a family set off the inclination to not let go?
At the end of the day everyone was tired and dirty and ready to be done with it. On the ride home Eric, the youngest of the crew, looked out the window and said, “Once you turn fifty you should just have to start giving things away.”
8
BUSINESS AND SHOW BUSINESS
* * *
Business
Plastics!
Plastic bins changed the lives of two guys in Texas. They had decided to go after a dream of starting their own business. At the time they were coworkers in the paint section of a department store. The fellas first considered homemade furniture, but a research trip to a commercial trade show led to an idea that perfectly matched an emerging need: there they saw stackable Akro bins made of industrial grade polymer. The bins vary in size and are used mostly to store inventory. You’ve surely encountered them at a doctor’s office holding things like syringes and the cups the nurse orders you to fill to the line.
Seeing the potential of introducing commercial-level organizing systems into civilian homes led Garrett Boone and Kip Tindell to open the Container Store in Dallas in 1978. A decade later there were seven Container Stores across Texas. In 2015 there were seventy Container Stores with an average size of twenty-five thousand square feet. By the time this book is published there should be seventy-nine stores in twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia. The stores are filled with things you didn’t know you needed, such as a hair dryer holder, fasteners to keep rolls of wrapping paper in place, a clear plastic soda can holder for your refrigerator, and bed risers to boost your frame a few inches off the ground so you can then store the Container Store’s specially made shallow underbed boxes you have filled. Full disclosure—a few years back when the Container Store signed a lease a few blocks from my home I was giddy with anticipation and walked by the location at least one a week until it opened, just to check in. For Val
entine’s Day my husband gave me flowers and a Container Store gift card.
The company’s estimated take for 2014 was $800 million—and that was actually down considerably after a blockbuster IPO in 2013. The stores’ workers are known for being highly compensated, twice the normal retail worker, and specifically trained. Where most retail sales folks ask, “May I help you?” and “Have you found what you are looking for?,” Container Store workers are often encouraged to say, “What space are you trying to organize?”1 For sixteen years the Container Store has been voted by Fortune magazine as one of the top one hundred companies to work for—and, yes, the stores carry Akro bins. Boone and Tindell were right.
The legend goes that early on someone walked into the original location and asked, “Are you the store that sells empty boxes?” On one level it is true: the Container Store simply sells receptacles. But it actually sells more than that. It sells potential and the promise of order and, in turn, serenity. It sells the possibility that your home can be free of confused masses and messes. It also means that your things might not be junk, if they are stored in a proper place or in an attractive vessel.
In the early days, one Texas journalist was fascinated by the store. Gaile Robinson from the Forth Worth Star-Telegram interviewed Mr. Boone in his home to see if he practiced what he advertised. Robinson walked away with this impression of the enterprise:
Junk Page 14