I walked past my youngest son’s car the other day and did a double take. Glancing in through the side window I could see that the pile of “stuff” in the back had not only taken up all the available leg space, but had actually filled the space between the front and back seats. You couldn’t even see the rear bench seat for the clothes, college textbooks, cooler and fast food wrappers.
 

   I immediately implored him to make things right again, saying something like: “that’s some nasty in there.”
 

    He just gave me a look. The kind that says: “hey, the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.” So I decided, it being June, that it was probably time for my own semi-annual car cleaning.
 

    The auto du jour is a 2001 Toyota Corolla. Yeah, I know. I’ve really got to trade that sucker in on another pickup. I just find it difficult to do when gas prices are skyrocketing toward not being able to go anywhere.
 

    I’ve never been of the opinion that the car defines the man. My attitude is “as long as it gets me there.” Well, it actually doesn’t always get me exactly there, due to ground clearance issues, but some extra walking is supposed to be good for my blood pressure.
 

    Anyhow, I opened all the doors and raked it out as a start. Then I divided things into piles – stuff to put away; stuff to take to the dump; compost … Then I started the serious sorting, which involves considerable decision-making. You know … is it better to try and clean this up or should I just get another?
 

    Here’s some of what I found. Two insulated shirt-jackets, to start. Why two, I wondered? Closer examination provided the answer. One had a crow call in the breast pocket. That was obviously something I wore during the spring turkey season, since I don’t hunt crows and only use the crow call as a locater call during the daytime hours of the turkey season when an owl call would seem suspiciously out of place.
 

    The other shirt/jacket? It had some squashed and badly melted bite-size Snickers Bars in the pockets. That was obviously leftover Halloween candy, which told me I was wearing this one during the deer season last fall.
 

    Among the papers there was a rather extensive “to do” list of things that I quickly determined never got done, the exception being number 32 – “sight in the muzzleloader,” which dates the list back to October. I put the list in the recyclables pile. I feel it’s very important for outdoors people to be “green” about things like trash disposal and to recycle whenever possible.
 

    I was momentarily puzzled as to why I had a hammer and a coffee can full of nails in the car until I remembered nailing up those targets to sight in the muzzleloader.
 

    One of the stray audiocassettes was a “how to” one about moose calling with my new moose horn call. It features a lot of cow moose moaning-in-lust sounds. That one got some attention from other motorists at stoplights back last fall when the weather was still warm enough to have the windows open. Earned me some mighty strange looks. I think it’s safe to put this away since it took me ten years to win the moose lottery this last time.
 

    The empty soft side gun case, owl call, hardwood and acrylic “strikers” and the hen turkey decoy are pretty much self explanatory, since that season just ended. The camouflage gloves are a bit of mystery, though. There are two left hand gloves in different camouflage patterns and two rights, in the same pattern, but it doesn’t match either of the left patterns. This leads me to suspect there are some more stray gloves waiting to be found somewhere.
 

    Look at this, a number three Mepps escaped from my tackle box and took up residence on the rear seat. Good thing no one sat on that baby.
 

    There’s a pocket notebook with a bunch of notes in handwriting that no longer make any sense to me, with one exception: “add to ‘not to do’ list – do not repeatedly wipe nose with arctic polar ice fishing gloves.” I remember that day. I couldn’t even touch my nose with tissues for a couple days after that trip. Those fleece-lined sandpaper-textured gloves are nice and warm and they’re great for holding onto slippery fish, but they definitely shouldn’t be put on the hands of someone with the gloved-hand-drippy-nose-wiping-habit.
 

    And there’s my hunter orange knit hat, for gosh sakes. It’s amazing the things you find under the seats with all those candy bar wrappers, crushed Styrofoam coffee cups and half-eaten bagels. It’ll clean up ok. I’ll just drop it in the hamper.
 

    I wish someone could explain the film canister, since I’ve been shooting strictly digital pictures for more than a year now. And I think I know now where all the lead depth sounders were been disappearing to throughout the ice fishing season. Good thing the EPA isn’t in charge of car inspections.
 

    All in all, it wasn’t such a bad task, cleaning the car. One thing that speeds up the process is that I don’t bother vacuuming – just scrape together and toss out a few double handfuls of road sand and grit. There’s definitely a limit to how fussy I want to be about things like cleaning out the car.
 

    Now I wonder if maybe I should take a peek in the glove box … or just call it a day.