I discovered that I had been born into the wrong profession. I should have been a Händler, a trader who bargains for junk. I advertised on the Brown Electronic For Sale Bulletin Board and on OSO.com, a Rhode Island site. I sold an antique Philco table radio on E-Bay for $131.00!! (The "The Bing Crosby Model) I found I could sell anything and everything.  Sometimes I would resort to reverse haendling to get rid of stuff: "All right, I'll give you the vacuum cleaner for $20, not $25, but you have to take the popcorn popper with hit. Every item became a challenge, and I would meet interesting people with whom I could strike up a relationship. It felt good knowing that our old mixmasters, microwaves, refrigerators, old gas stoves, speakers, barbecues, coffee tables, air conditioners, breakfast sets, television sets, were going to good homes. It felt even better to give away treasured possesions to loved ones--the Steinway baby grand to Josie, the pump organ to Janet. I took in thousands of dollars in sales. My thousands of Caruso records went to Dik Saalfeld, who drove up all the way from Washington to get them. But I kept the gramophone and a few personal favorites, especially "L'Alba Separa Dalla Luce L'Ombra."  Passing on the records was rather like the way I first got them. What I couldn't sell, I donated to the Philharmonic if it was valuable, and to the Salvation Army if it wasn't. If I couldn't sell it, or donate it, or give it, I left it for the trash pickers. They come on Sunday, late in the day, driving slowly in an old rusting 12-passenger van with windows. Their 20-year old wife is in the front seat, pregnant, holding a 1-year old infant. They have hair and beard like Jesus, no teeth, a good suntan under their dirty tanktop, lots of tattoos, such as "Born to Raise Hell," and no teeth. When you see one of these, you run out into the street and wave him down. They know their work. They will take anything...anything!! One, picking up a piece of yellow plastic, exclaimed, "Wow! A diverter for a Rival hot-air popcorn popper!"

Carol left for Israel on June 13, and I had one week to finish the enema. I hired two boys from Whitmarsh House to pack up all the old books in the cellar, about 5,000 of them--the trashy novels; the books from French 20 at Harvard, Edition LaRousse, with pages of Racine, Montesquieu and LaRochefoucault that were still uncut; the books on history, Jewish philosophy; children's books. We already taken Carol's good Jewish books to her office at JTS. We had set aside those books--Joseph and his Brothers by Thomas Mann--that we simply had to keep. We had a used book dealer who gave us a few hundred dollars for our more expensive books. The rest were for the Salvation Army. They will not come to pick up books anymore unless you have at least 15 boxes. We had 30. As Carl Feldman said, "Watch out, he's selling the wallpaper off the walls!" We left the house cleaner than the day we bought it.