Clearing Out the Cobwebs & Cleaning off the Workbench

…it’s an annual ritual, whether it needs it or not

My father built workbenches for his sons when we moved into our first houses in Houston. Mine was built three houses ago. It’s a very sturdy affair, composed of 4x4 and 4x6 lumber, topped with a ¾-inch plywood work surface—none of this particle board garbage. It presides over my garage from a raised section of the concrete floor.

My workbench has a magnetic personality: It attracts all manner of drop-offs—boxes and bags, spare nuts & bolts, a packing slip, and a collection of not fully used items that are too good to throw out, but not good enough to keep in the house: A package of dual-filament tail light/brake light bulbs, clips for fastening dust gaskets under the hood, a set of plastic screw end covers, a partial roll of metal tape, and weed eater filament.
Those kinds of things.

There is one of the bricks from the original KODA-AM/FM Studios building that was on San Felipe Street in Houston. There’s a commemorative plaque identifying its significance as more than just another door stop. An old KODA-Houston Oilers koozie is stuffed with pens and markers. Atop the brick sits a favorite photo of my bride before she was my bride.
Were we ever that young?

My workbench also boasts a sort of “hall of fame:” There’s a keepsake photo of me with Dom DeLuise taken at the SUNNY Studios on Post Oak Blvd. Dom passed in 2004. Our first Yorkie, Sophie, stares mightily from a green metal frame, and our kids when they were kids, playfully pose in a wooden Mickey Mouse frame.

My late brother-in-law is preserved in a monochrome print wearing sunglasses and a button-down collar. He left us during the Covid pandemic. A souvenir photo from the funeral service of Dickie Rosenfeld hangs by a clip from a plastic tool caddy mounted on pegboard over the bench. Dickie was the GM who hired me to work at CBS Radio. His past claim(s) to fame (and there were many) included bringing the Beatles and Elvis Presley to Houston. Not at the same time. Dickie died in 2000.
That’s the kind of stuff that survived the annual garage purge.

Items that weren’t really useful, needed, or touched in the past year got thrown in the trash…or, if they appeared to have some utilitarian value, were donated to Goodwill.
I just wonder how long it will take for that clean workbench to attract the first piece of a year’s worth of clutter.