Hoarder Gone Wild.

[CAJUNLAWYER]

I think an earlier poster hit it on the nose. Mental Illness pure and simple. It's a doggonne shame and a lot more widespread than you think. Sad part is that a good guy like Charlie (and others like him)is often times the first and ONLY medical responder for these poor souls. Guys like Charlie do more mental health counseling than most mental health professionals-but at least they get to carry guns and get free do nuts which makes up for the lack of pay

 

[HAWKEYE10]

Thanks Charlie for another good story. I enjoy reading every one. Don

 

[sjmjax]

It's been said before. But, I'll mention it again.

You should write a book!

 

[rondo]

It's been said before. But, I'll mention it again.

You should write a book!

Great stories! I'd buy a copy or two.

 

[bitstream]

It's been said before. But, I'll mention it again.

You should write a book!

Co write it with ferrilmerril and I'd buy multiple copies to pass out to friends.

 

[nawilson]

Ohhhhhh! "Hoarders Gone Wild"... people with a lot of junk...

Not the story I was expecting... LOL

 

[Old 44 Guy]

Good God Charlie; what a tale. I don't envy your job. I was a telephone repaiman for 38 years & saw some terrible places but nothing like you describe.

 

[CW Spook]

Just when I'd been thinking I hadn't seen a Charlie story for a while...

 

[monet61]

That is just sad. Sad for her, sad for you and sad for the animals.

 

[writerinmo]

Sounds like my ex-wife...

 

[charlie sherrill]

We just finished up an hour ago. The sanitation department just carried the last load to the landfill. Three days and 16 truck loads of "stuff" at 4,000 lbs. a load. That's 64,000 lbs. or 32 tons if my math is right. The locks are changed, the posted signs are up, and the street is cleared again. Marilyn didn't show up today. She was seen though...at a yard sale putting "stuff" in the trunk of the old Caddy.

 

[beaverislander]

""Marilyn didn't show up today. She was seen though...at a yard sale putting "stuff" in the trunk of the old Caddy.""



Unbelievable.

 

[bitstream]

""Marilyn didn't show up today. She was seen though...at a yard sale putting "stuff" in the trunk of the old Caddy.""



Unbelievable.

Sadly, not unbelievable but actually fully expected. She has a recognized mental illness. She actually needs help. She will continue to acquire things and hoard them.

 

[Jim in Wisconsin]

I worked at a water utility. One of my inspectors had a work order to take a meter out of a house in Madison WI. He was familiar with it, and asked me to go along, as it was, as he put it -spooky.
We walked in the front door, which was open. There was a narrow passage between piles of newspapers to the kitchen. I looked at the date on one-1957. This was in the mid '80s. The kitchen was full of empty bean cans, and had a pretty good stink about it. From what I could see of the living room, the finish plaster was falling off-no heat in the winter. Going down the basement stairs, we got about halfway down on stairs then we were walking on magazines. We found the meter which had frozen, and it appeared that water had gone down a nearby drain. Pulled the meter, and left. In the driveway were two cars also filled with magazines and other 'stuff' as Charlie called it. The most recent license tag was 1969.
The majority of this 'stuff' was papers and magazines-but obviously we just did what we were gonna do, and got outta there!

 

[Jim Shugart]

Another great story, Charles. Keep them coming. . .

 

[Sebago Son]

Whoooooops!

We just finished up an hour ago. The sanitation department just carried the last load to the landfill. Three days and 16 truck loads of "stuff" at 4,000 lbs. a load. That's 64,000 lbs. or 32 tons if my math is right....

And in the center of load number 12, was a bag containing a Registered Magnum box for a nickle 7 1/2" gun filled with spools of thread, sewing needles and the original registration certificate...

 

[scooter123]

Back when I was a co-op student in 1980 one of the maintenance mechanics had his granfather pass away. Turned out that his grandfather was a specialist in paper, as in stacks of old magazines and newspapers that dated back to the 30's. While he as surveying the house trying to estimate how many cubic yards were involved his wife picked up a National Geographic off a stack and started thumbing through it. She found 20 dollars in Silver Certificates between the pages, two fives and a 10. That started a 6 month ordeal of going through every single stack in the house page by page. Turned out that another paper item that grandpaw specialized in hoarding was cash, they found 176,000 dollars in face value. When I told him that Silver Certificates carried a premium as a collectable, he contacted a dealer and they then had to seperate the cash into collecteable cash versus plain cash. Odd thing is they didn't find any coins and when I suggested checking the gardens with a metal detector I was told to shut my face.

 

[G-Mac]

I used to know a girl that always seemed to have a lot of money. I asked here if she hoarded all that money by herself. She said no. Her sister hoard half of it.

 

[rburg]

While he as surveying the house trying to estimate how many cubic yards were involved his wife picked up a National Geographic off a stack and started thumbing through it. She found 20 dollars in Silver Certificates between the pages,

Similar story. When I was in grad school a buddy was living in his future MILs mothers house. Seems the old man died and they moved the grandma into a nursing home. My friend needed a place to stay (just out of the army.) So the deal was he needed to clean the house up and throw away everything. His future MIL and her sister had already looted all the silverware and jewelry. Nothing left but junk from the 1930s on. And the family had already been at war over the inheritance for a couple of years. Hence the vanishing jewelry and silver.

So I was kind of handicapped. I had a several months old son, and my wife worked 2nd shift as a nurse. I just picked up the kid and went visiting. Babies sleep most of the time anyhow. As we were boxing up books to toss out (none interesting titles), I opened one and found a $20 bill inside. I said "Hey Ralphie, look at this". He was shocked, then upset. So we had to unbox all the books and go through them, finding untold amounts of cash. So the clean up procedure changed dramatically.

And he had a problem (I didn't.) I had no claim to any of it, I was just helping out a buddy. We split a 6 pack and discussed it. Because I was a law student, he figured I had some kind of moral compass. I had to explain that law schools selected their students because of a lack of morality! His problem was who to tell, or if he should tell anyone. I never knew (or wanted to know) what the total he found was. I know it was well over $15,000. But had he told his fiancee, she'd have been torn on if she should tell her mother. We already had strong indications of her proclivity toward pocketing things she'd found.

My guess was always that Ralph just pocketed the cash and spent it on them in the future. I've never asked him, and I don't think I want to know. At this point it would just cause trouble.