wickenburg-az.com

The epitaph above has no sinister meaning. I just always wanted to write that.

I have suggested to Miss Ellie that she bury me in one location–not right away, of course–and put the headstone somewhere else. She appeared confused. She does not understand the joy of pure cussedness.

My actual headstone is to carry my motto of many years: “You just never know.”

It hardly seems possible that seven years have passed since we anxiously awaited Y2K, fearing that the world as we knew it would collapse.

It is taking a little longer than we expected, but people in high places are working toward that goal. I just hope that we get to experience 2007 before 2008, which seems to be the only number on the minds of people in high places.

The new year finds me in the grip of unremitting lassitude. I have made only one resolution: Every day, on the following day, I will do something useful.

Maybe I’ll once again tackle the problem of organizing my belongings, most of which seem to be in the form of paper. My collection of paper is second only to, and dwarfed by, that of my loving wife.

When I began using computers twenty-five years ago, experts predicted that we would soon have a paper-free, cashless society. I have achieved the cashless part.

Computers are attached at one end to a printer, and at the other end to the Internet. This means that instead of going to a library and grubbing through books and microfilm, as I did for decades, I can tap into the world’s collection of information, misinformation and disinformation.

All of these formations are piling up in my room, joining the jumbled notes and clippings from forty years of journalism.

About three years ago, I set out to conquer this mountain. I consolidated the contents of four bankers boxes into two bankers boxes.

Those boxes conspired during the night,and by morning there were five bankers boxes and a banker in my room, plus a shipping carton from Amazon.com.

Miss Ellie has suggested that I alphabetize my files. “You know: A, B, C…” She is not the first to suggest this.

The actual filing cabinets in my room were once in alphabetical order. That was about a dozen years ago, when I retired simultaneously from being a newspaperman and a historian.

I rarely open those file drawers. The folders therein, perhaps out of sheer boredom, have migrated from place to place, neighboring around all through the drawers.

For the sake of accuracy–I wouldn’t want to lie to you–I just took a core sample of the file titles in the second drawer down from the top of the right-hand cabinet.

“Tewksbury–Bates–Mogollon–Stage Robbery– Love Story–Big Dry Wash–Salome Sun– Sitgreaves–Searchlight–Stampedes–Lost Mines– 1910–Swilling, Jack….”

Several files are labeled “1910,” my favorite year in Arizona history. Unfortunately,they are scattered among the Ps and Qs and Hs.

I suspect that the file folders are mating and multiplying; I know for certain that this is happening in the cabinet where a lifetime of snapshots reside. Fertile little buggers.

There are other collections, too copious to mention, and I don’t want to inflict on you the boredom that I am certain to encounter when I tackle the problem.

I’ll start with the filing cabinets, then move on to the bankers boxes, which, through merbers and acquisitions, now amount to an international cartel.

You should hear from me again around the middle of 2009.

Last 5 posts by Jim Cook

• Journal of Disbelief - May 21st, 2010
• Sealing the Deal - March 14th, 2010
• It's a Dry Tsunami - March 7th, 2010
• Running Laps in Lapland - February 7th, 2010
• Readers Respond, Unequivocally - November 6th, 2009