Story time

Day 4

After so much misfortune, there are days when a man just needs some R&R and three burritos. Unaware of what my aunt Marika was thinking of making for dinner (hint: burritos), I thought to myself as I walked into a burrito shop, “boy, I did a swell job today of not setting things back. I didn’t even break a window. I deserve a burrito.” And I was right! And the Mexican gods (much kinder than the American or whatever gods that blasted the holy shit out of the mower just days earlier) bestowed upon me three little donkeys. One for lunch, and two for dinner. And since burritos are my favorite food, today was a good day. Capped off with a couple of Racer 5s and a paradoxically free Pay Per View movie (Fantastic Mr. Fox), and today was roughly as productive as the others while providing several times more burritos.

Day 5

Hank the Rat sat around all day, fat and lazy. Sure he shuffled around when he was hungry or needed to make rat turds (or, as Hank the Rat called them, turds), but generally speaking Hank just didn’t bother do take care of himself. Most days, Hank would eat his dinner of rotting or discarded whatever, curl up, and go to sleep. One day, Hank stumbled upon something he rarely bothered to pay attention to: a book. Today was a different day for Hank. Hank needed a change in his life. And a book was a good way to start. So Hank took the book (coincidentally starting another new change - stealing), and went back home to give it a good read. The book was called “Living Healthfully.” Hank learned to eat right, exercise, and take care of himself in ways he had never thought of before. He started to cook better meals (healthy muffins were his favorite), and he lost a lot of weight. A year later Hank realized he had become a completely different rat. He realized that everything he used to be was a thing of the past. So he made a batch of his favorite muffins. He then grew bored of his new life, curled up, and died.

Moral: Rats shouldn’t make muffins.

By Seth Tippey

(check photo below to see Hank)

Day 5 Part Deux

On a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean sat an old house built in the late 1800s. For the past century the house was occupied by the Mattsons, the family that originally built the house from leftover, discarded redwood. The house stayed in the family for generations. Over the years the family accumulated more miscellaneous things than could be stored in the garage, workshop, and house, so small lean-to shacks were built across the three acre property in order to make room. But these too soon filled to the brim, and there was no other choice for the Mattsons, a reclusive family set on maintaining their lifestyle, but to start dumping everything onto the grass and into the woods. They discarded cars, bathtubs, barrels of oil, tubing, hoses, metal frames, oil filters, buckets, motors, sinks, piping, and anything else that might at some point be useful but was currently not needed. And still the Mattsons kept to themselves, hiding away in their den of garbage. The property was soon overrun by trash, waste, chemicals, and rats. But nothing was ever thrown away. Soon, nothing else could be seen but generations worth of junk.

And on the inside, things were even worse. When the property was put on the market after the Mattsons decided it was time to move back to Arkansas, they began showing the property in its horribly dilapidated state to prospective buyers. And while they didn’t hide the horrid state of their dwelling, and were completely unable to hide the impossibly disgusting landscape, there was one terrible secret that the Mattsons kept from outsiders. For the past twenty years, there was a single room in the house that was devoid of clutter. Buyers were told that the family’s mother lived in that room and that she was not to be disturbed. Suspiciously, nothing else was said.

Eventually the house was bought. The garbage, discarded cars and oil bins all came with it. The acres of waste sat unmoved. The Mattsons changed nothing. They simply picked up and left.

But the door could finally be unlocked. Whatever was hidden could now be revealed. The ominous room, the only thing the family thought needed to be hidden, was a small room that housed only a reclining chair. Nothing else was in the room. It wasn’t until further inspection that the secret the Mattsons had been keeping became clear. The air was stale, the blue reclining chair reeked of urine, and the entire room smelled of stale excrement. When the ceiling panels were removed, thousands of flies came pouring out, filling the room. The Mattsons had kept their mother locked away in the small room, forced to live in her own urine and excrement in the small blue reclining chair while flies fed off her waste. The repulsive family kept it all a secret. Mom was not to be seen. They hid behind their wall of hoarded goods and mountains of worthless junk, keeping their mother invisible to outside eyes.

Day 6

Only one story from day five is true. And I’ll tell you one thing, it has nothing to do with Hank. For those of you somewhat befuddled by the past couple of stories, let me bring you up to speed. In order for this trip to happen my uncle needed to help me fix my van. And he did. So now I’m up here in Humboldt trying to repay the favor. My aunt and uncle, Robert and Marika, bought that property from the Mattsons up in Trinidad with the hopes of restoring it to a habitable state. They have made a tremendous amount of progress, but still there is junk buried throughout the woods. My uncle and I, over the past two days, have been filling a dumpster with roughly three to four tons of scrap metal. We started to pull metal out of the earth only to realize that the garbage went down several layers. The more we pulled out, the more we revealed. It’s absolutely amazing how much crap these people stored up. Imagine this scenario for a moment: you’re sitting and thinking about how much garbage you have in the garage that simply needs to go away. But some stupid part of your brain says “instead of throwing it away, why not throw it into the backyard, go and get more garbage, and then fill the garage with that.” And you do that for roughly 100 years. It’s disgusting.

So I went through a workshop that had drawers full of nuts, bolts, motors, old rusty tools, radios, nails, and lots and lots of rat turds. After we cleaned out the workshop we started to work on the hillside, where we got even more garbage. We filled the dumpster completely, and we barely scratched the surface. Unbelievable. And in case you were wondering, I didn’t shower last night. I thought the bed could use a little turd dusting.