The Holtonian

McKay's Run

One of my most favorite things is trimming the fat... no not my own blubber but getting rid of my possessions. I hate being a pack rat and I hate being loaded down with excess crap. I think my brothers and I detest pack rattiness so much because our father has always struggled with throwing stuff away. Our garage was always a chore to clean out because we would pull everything out, throw away a few pieces of rotten lumber, and throw it all back into the garage leaving it in a similar fashion as we found it. What I’ve been looking forward to ridding myself most of these past few days are my cds and books. The venture to McKay's looms near and I prepare myself to be rid of useless crap...

For those people who live in Chatty that never venture past their threshold, McKay's is the all purpose music, movies, and bookstore that buys and cells used sources of entertainment. So far I’ve garnered nearly thirty books and perhaps 20 cds to take there on Saturday. McKay's in the past has been the source of my finanacial security. Whenever I needed gas money to get back to St. Louey come Christmas and Summer Break i would go to McKays and cell as many cd's as I could bare to part with. I've never sold many books there before, one time i sold ten books and made fifty cents. Needless to say that with hopefully thirty books i'll back a buck fifty which can get me six gumballs at the mall, i'm so psyched.
The books I’ll be glad to get rid of considering the fact that I’ll never read them again or ever read them in the first place. Some books of mine I’ve deemed classics and a necessity to keep to impress people that come over to my house books like The Old Man and the Sea, Grapes of Wrath, and Beginners Guide to Yo-Yos. These books portray to my visitors and friends that I'm learned and well versed in the fine literature of this 20th century and that I can spin a mean yo. But I find some of my guests are becoming suspicious of my knowledge of literature. For example a friend of mine came over and here's an excerpt of our conversation (I tape them... I’m very paranoid)
Friend: "Wow, Chris you read Malcolm X's biography, I'm impressed."
Chris: "Well yeah it was a good read. I especially liked the part where Malcolm took out his shot gun and said 'I'll be back' and then shot the Islamic extremist assassin."

I could tell he was suspicious of my actually having read the book but he did not want to insult me so he asked me about another book...

Friend: "What do you think Salinger was trying to say in Catcher in the Rye?
Chris: "Well its hard to say really, I think he needed to use more explicatives to really get his point across...
Friend: "Did you even read any of these books?"
Chris: "...what’s that? I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave, family emergency."

Anyway, the CD's I’m trimming away are ones I’ve scavenged from around the globe and bought on whims and at times when I thought it necessary to spend money for the sake of the economy. One time I thought it necessary to buy MC Hammer's Greatest Hits since I would one day want to show my kids what good rap music sounded like when i was growing up. Another time I figured since I was (and still am for that matter) a Christian that I should own a Christian music cd---so I bought the Newsboys Greatest Hits...however they don't appear to have a reformed, OPC approved world view so they've been put in the scrap pile.
So tomorrow I venture to that great castle in the sky known as McKay’s to rid myself of all the useless music and books I’ve accumulated over the past few years. And hopefully I will return with more useless music and books that I purchase tomorrow. Then in a year's time I will turn around and sell them back to McKay's. Ah the circle of life… I hear an Elton John song coming on…