We look upon ourselves as an acquisitive society these days – it might have begun in the 80s, the decade of “Greed is good.” Michael Douglas, in his character as the Wall Street wheeler-dealer, gave us the throw-away phrase that defined us, sadly enough. But growing up in the 50s and 60s in a household of six kids, I was fed lots of stories (that I believed were urban legends) about “stuff” – and how accumulations of stuff could get out of hand. They based their cautions on the story of the Collyer brothers en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collyer_brothers  who proved "stuff" could kill you.

My father knew a man whose family had a junk store, I guess you would call it. I don’t know what the definition of this establishment would be today. He had antiques in there, books and maps, equipment and old tools. There were lamps with no shades, jewelry, clocks, paintings. In some ways, it was like a one-man flea market. For a kid, it was fascinating, but who knew what was around the next pile of stuff? Some of it was perched pretty high above a youngster’s head.

My father didn’t take us there often, and we had the sense that the old man, the father of my father’s friend, was a little crazy – driven by accumulating more stuff – shades of the future greed. But sometimes my father would bring us home a Nancy Drew or Bobbsey Twins book, and chances are he got those at the junk store – so goodie for us. (It was the beginning of our addiction to books - bad for us, it probably turns out.)

As a stark contrast, it’s really something to watch the stories on the news tonight about families who’ve left behind everything in their eagerness to get away from fires spreading like spilled milk across the California landscape. They’ll have few belongings, but they have their children, their pets, maybe a vehicle, some paperwork, some medications. Not much in the way of “stuff” and they all sound kind of happy about it! The stuff would probably slow down the escape. In fact, people could die trying to figure out the important part of what stuff to bring with them.

Better to bring nothing but each other.