By Leonard Gray / L’Observateur / January 18, 1999

Not long ago, I wrote a column which was never published. It had to dowith me being a self-confessed pack rat. In that column, I detailedeverything heaped in four piles on top of my desk and noted toward the end that if you thought that was bad, you should see my study at home.

Well, things have changed. My desk is no longer a total wreck because Icleaned it off and tossed a lot of unnecessary papers and generally organized it better.

Let’s talk about my room at home, though.

First off, let me make one thing perfectly clear. I’m a collector. I collectthings. Many of my collections end up in one place in my house, that room.Not all of my collections, however, did end up there – otherwise, I’d never find them again.

To describe this room – first off, I can’t open the door all the way. Why,you may ask? Well, there’s the stack of books and magazines immediately inside the door. That’s next to the six boxes filled with old comic books,atop of which rests some camera equipment and more magazines.

Then to your eye comes the five floor-to-ceiling bookcases, each stuffed with books (in some areas, two levels deep). Then there’s the three floor-to-ceiling utility shelving units. Each of these holds 20 boxes of comicbooks. That collection goes back to 1942 but most of my really valuablestuff is in my safe deposit box in the bank.

Then there’s another bookcase in the closet stuffed with my old textbooks from college, videotapes, more books and magazines and my coin collection. There’s also the collection of Howard Stern-related books andmagazines and also my clipping scrapbooks.

Over in the opposite corner is a 1920s-era manual typewriter, a filing cabinet stuffed with my manuscripts (about 40 short stories and two novels) and a 1950s-era metal Christmas tree. In another corner is anAmerican flag on a stand.

There’s a box filled with historical items, photos and stories, about the history of the River Parishes. There’s a stack of Louisiana PressAssociation awards I’ve earned over the past 15 years.

Elsewhere in the house is my videotape collection, many more books and my record and CD collection.

For some strange reason, my ever-tolerant wife wants me to “pick up.”She doesn’t go into that notorious room but she never tires of showing it off to visitors so she can prove to the world how weird I am. Well. Not”weird,” maybe. Eccentric or odd, I can live with.However, she seems to have the idea I can just magically pick everything up off the floor (where there’s only two square feet of open space) and I can run a vacuum in there.

How do you deal with a woman like that? Gotta love ’em.

Leonard Gray is a reporter for L’Observateur

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