Road dogs on a pickin parade

Yesterday certainly was an interesting one. Yesterday I was struggling with a problematic American past. Pickin is always an interesting journey. So many different personalities, so many different pics, so many different things to pick from in somebody’s home. At times I go into peoples homes or pole barns and I am thrilled delighted and sometimes enlightened by what I see. Sometimes it can be a very encouraging and exciting moment for me, Mike and the rest of the crew. I always love it when Mike brings Francie out on the road, which is all the time. I love it when Francie is out there because even through the most difficult situations she is a therapy dog for us. There are a lot of situations when we’re on the road that we encounter that can cause frustration, depression, confusion and she’s such a wonderful outlet for hugs and cuddles with any of us are feeling that way. Yesterday was one of those days where I definitely felt overwhelmed with grief. I’m not gonna get into the details of why this particular house was so hard to pick and I can’t really give them any details as to who’s house it was so I’m gonna try to be as vague as possible and still get my point across. While we have these incredible days of picking out on the road where we are inspired by the people we are picking from or the house we are picking in, it is needless to say that we experience the opposite of that also. Problematic picks… What are the most difficult things for me as a Picker is going into homes where there is a lot of Nazi or confederate memorabilia that is not only collected but put in place of honor within the home. You can tell a lot about somebody by walking through their home and looking at their collections. When I do find myself in the home of somebody who has very intentionally curated their home into a Nazi and confederate museum, it hurts me inside. It makes me wanna throw up. I get physically ill from it and I can’t seem to shake the ghosts that live in the house. Yesterday was a day like that for me. While we do our best to hide the unpleasantness of history from you and honestly from us so that we don’t have to look at it, it’s still there. You can still feel it, I can still see it even if you can’t on your television. It’s still there, lingering. It’s still in the house with its energy seeping into my clothes. I’m thankful that yesterday I did not have to pick from the gentleman who owned the house, rather I picked from his family, he had passed. And it was interesting because his family hated everything he left behind. Part of me wanted to walk out of the home and not do the pick at all however, his family was in desperate need of help because they did not want anything to do with this memorabilia, they hated it, it did not represent them, it represented one person in their family who took over the entire family home to create a museum of hate. In this in home museum there were many items. I would say 1/3 of the items were related to World War II and/or extremely problematic. The rest of the items were every day antique items that we normally really enjoy picking through. I find myself feeling conflicted, understanding that a lot of people hold onto World War II items as spoils of war. I understand that. I understand that history happened and that there are going to be remnants of it everywhere. I understand that certain people are going to be attracted to certain times in history for certain reasons that I might not understand. My son was obsessed with World War II as he was growing up and is extremely knowledgeable on anything related to that subject matter. He’s brilliant, has a brilliant mind and loves to collect items in relationship to World War II, I must say that my child does not have one swastika or confederate flag in his collection. This is important because you can be a historian, you can be interested in history, you can collect history, and still avoid bringing problematic history into your home. Why does it matter? It matters because we are what we collect. We are what we surround ourselves with. Even if we are collecting these items as spoils of war, if we are displaying these items proudly on our walls do you not think it flies in the face of the soldiers who fought the battle against the Nazis, the Confederates? If this war happened to prevent one specific time or type of harmful lifestyle from creeping into the American culture then why would we proudly display pieces of that problematic lifestyle in our homes? Does that make any sense? I’m extremely interested in and at times obsessed with certain parts of history, the problematic pieces of that history are not allowed in my home. The energy of those pieces creates a narrative that we might not even understand in the moment but trust me when I tell you that energy is alive. All day long having to look at these problematic pieces of history yesterday sucked the soul out of me. I felt it shoot straight out my asshole I swear to God! I walked into a problematic home and that left me with problematic feelings all day long. I wrestled with the dark and the light all day long. I was reminded constantly as I saw these remnants of history on the walls, of that dark heavy weight of history. This is something I have struggled with since day one of my job. It’s been 13 years. I’ve been able to compartmentalize my feelings about all of this for 13 years but I wonder why the desire to collect pieces of problematic history and display them proudly on the walls? Can somebody help me with this? Is there a reason that I don’t understand?

Instead of showing you pictures of problematic history I decided to show you photos from the last couple days that really inspired me and made me hopeful for the future. I decided to include photos of Francie since she absorbed most of the problematic energy for the day, she was truly my touchstone. I included photos of Mike and I hanging out in the van, cool little things that I found while I was on the road. I figured these are the items that are worth looking at, these are the items that are worth talking about. And that’s what I try to do on the show. I try to pull out the items that I feel are worth talking about and try not to rely on problematic and traumatic history to tell a story. It’s it’s too heavy in my heart. I don’t wanna rely on problematic and traumatic history to talk about important events of the past.

I know that we find ourselves in those conversations regardless at times but sometimes I feel like I’m walking through the valley of land mines when I’m walking through somebody’s home. And I wonder how their children felt. I wonder if their children enjoyed waking up and looking at this problematic and traumatic history? Were there children scared of it? How did the children’s friends feel when they come over to the house? Did these collectors ever care about how these collections affected their family? Did anybody in the family speak out about these collections? How are their comments received? Were they received and kindness really met with abuse?

My job is to record history. My job is to record peoples collections, not edit them. Yet I find myself editing peoples collections pretty regularly for your television consumption. I find myself not wanting to speak about this traumatic shit anymore. Because I feel like most of us especially in TV have a tendency to look at these pieces of history from a very detached perspective, not really thinking about how these images constantly revealed on television and in the movies affect people who have endured these pieces of traumatic history in person or a family who have endured these pieces of traumatic history. It was quite interesting when I asked one of the crewmembers how they felt about walking into this house… Their response was “well, I’m Jewish so walking into the house I’m reminded that there are many of my family members that are not here because of this traumatic time in history so it’s problematic and it’s bothersome but I’m so used to seeing it all the time on the road but I’m somewhat desensitized because I still have to move forward and do my job regardless of what I’m seeing around me”. I asked another person on the crew how does this affect you seeing all of this problematic history? Their response was “I don’t judge people by their collections, I judge people by how they treat me.”

It made me feel like I was being entirely too sensitive about what I was seeing, however it made me really uncomfortable. Every time we walk into a home or museum like this it makes me incredibly uncomfortable. I want to crawl out of my skin. Often times when I go to somebody’s home to pick I will find myself picking after we’re done filming so that I can take pieces of that history home and continue to fill my collections but yesterday no. I wanted nothing from that house. Even the innocent portions of history, I wanted nothing from the house. It was too dark, too heavy. I didn’t want to take anything home that had the energy on it. Even when I came home last night, I walked in the door of the hotel and I stripped everything off and put on different clothes because I just felt like the energy had seeped into the fabric of my clothing. But I’m a hyper sensitive person. I’ve been told this many times. Have you ever found yourself in this position? Many of you pick I know that. Have you ever found yourself in a place where you don’t want to take anything home? Where you’re afraid of the energy of the house attaching to you? Now all that said, I must say that the family that we picked from was a wonderful family, very loving, they wanted nothing to do with the problematic history that the original owner was so enamored with. They found themselves in a desperate situation where they needed help getting rid of all of this history that made them feel overwhelmed. I thought most of the items we actually picked from the house were beautiful, non-problematic, and definitely deserved to see the light of day and be resold and appreciated in somebody else’s home. I’m happy that the bulk of our business does not revolve around highly problematic history. But I guess when it comes down to it history is problematic, I think that’s obvious to most of us. I think sometimes looking back in the face of everything that we are and were as a country can be incredibly uncomfortable because we come from ignorance. History is heavy. There’s no way around that it’s just heavy. And there are definitely times where I don’t want to carry that weight. But it is my job. And 90% of my job I love! But I am really struggling with this piece of it. Do you have any thoughts, comments, words of wisdom? I don’t really even know that there’s a specific answer to what I’m saying today but I’m interested to see how other people feel about the topic. I don’t talk about this part of my job very often because I don’t like thinking about this part of my job very often. But today I seem to be haunted by this house. Is that normal? Am I being too sensitive? What do I do with all of these feelings?