Coronavirus CT: Things One Finds On A Cooped-Up Cleaning Day

VERNON, CT — So social distancing is in order. It's raining. Stuck inside. Even church is closed on a Sunday. There's not much to do but the thing that's been put off for months — maybe years. It's time to clean THAT part of the basement.

Ugh.

So, armed with a broom, dust pan, shop vac and a trash bag, the adventure begins. In minutes, it becomes a veritable time capsule of things forgotten, lost and migrated. The scientific terminology would be "artifacts."

Fast-forward. The treasure chest is now full.

The oldest item recovered was a microcassette (remember those?) on which an inverview with George Foster was recorded when he was a member of the New York Mets — in 1986. The second oldest was the label from a winter sleeping bag that was the subject of a product feature in the mid-2000s.

Here's a look at some other finds:

• A lift ticket from Catamount from a March 25, 2018, ski trip
• An undated ski pass from Okemo Mountain Resort
• A 2016 receipt from a walk-in medical clinic in Las Vegas (Don't ask)
• Assorted hair ties from the kids
• A sports mouthguard strap without the mouthguard. (Must have been an emergency fix during a lacrosse game and the strap fell out of the equipment bag)
• A pencil
• A pencil eraser
• A long expired credit card from a jeweler at the Buckland Hills mall
• Four golf balls
• 11 cents
• One spike from a golf shoe (illegal now)
• One clothespin
• A plastic steak from a kids play kitchen
• An Aldi supermarket receipt from 2015
• A sticker promoting Vermont-based Darn Tough socks
• The flat- and phillips-head screwdriver drill bits needed when mounting a TV two months ago
• Four twist ties and two zip ties
• One sock (yes... just one)

So wanted to play the interview, but who knows where the old recorder went. The 11 cents can be put to good use. So can the zip ties.

Up next is the tool shed, which could be even more of an adventure.

Stay tuned.

Oh and this coronavirus thing needs to end and public works facilities need to open. Don't ask how many old paint cans need to be discarded.