Published: April 22, 2008 09:10 pm            

John Cannon: Spring cleaning finds

I have spent the last few days doing some spring cleaning. It has been a trip down memory lane.

Now, I realize that most people probably don’t get particularly nostalgic when cleaning, but then most people probably clean out the desk drawers in their office more often than once a decade — or longer.

But I’m not most people. The idea to rid the two desks and one bookcase in my office of excess clutter was hatched over the weekend.

It wasn’t because the messy drawers bothered me. As long as I could still close them, I didn’t have to look at the mess except when hunting for something in the drawers. Out of sight, out of mind.

Sure, the drawers were a bit disorganized. No, it was worse than that. Except for two drawers that I use as part of my filing system, the drawers were completely disorganized. There seemed to be no rhyme nor reason to what was in each of the other drawers, but that’s not completely true. Each item was in a drawer because that is where it fit.

But the degree of disorganization didn’t bother me, either. Despite more than three decades of attempts by my wife to get me organized, I essentially remain a disorganized person. In fact, neat freaks make me nervous.

No, I decided to clean out my desk drawers out of curiosity. Except for what was near the top in each drawer, I had no idea what was in them. I decided to find out.

That’s how cleanup day became a trip down memory lane.

I found a packet of materials Bruce Lunsford sent out when he was running for governor. However, this packet was Lunsford’s 2003 race against Ben Chandler. If he sent out a similar packet for his 2007 race, I didn’t find it.

I found photographs of my children from the time they were toddlers until they were young adults. I found a picture of my granddaughter sitting on my lap as an infant with me dressed as Santa Claus.

I found about a dozen greeting cards my wife had sent me over the years. She loves to send greeting cards, and she carefully selects each one. I may not have known where they were, but I never threw a single one away.

However, the one real relic I found in the bottom of a desk drawer was a proportion wheel, once an essential tool for doing my job but now a museum piece.

For the young and uninformed, a proportion wheel is what we editors used to use to determine the size of photographs on a page. The wheel became obsolete more than a decade ago when we began laying out the pages of The Independent on the computer. The computer can do in a matter of seconds what it used to take much longer to do with a proportion wheel.

I showed the wheel to a young copy editor here at The Independent.

“Do you know what this is, and how to use it?” I asked.

“No, not really,” she confessed.

“Of course not,” I replied. “There is absolutely no reason why you would have to know what it is.”

I kept the proportion wheel. These young kids just out of college can do a whole lot more than I can on a computer, but at least I know how to use a proportion wheel. I take a bit of pride in having that completely useless skill.

Shoot, I bet there are lots of old-timers like me out there who still know how to use a slide rule. Remember those?

JOHN CANNON can be reached at jcannon@dailyindependent.com or at (606) 326-2549.

        

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.