Steve Watkins: Teenage Garage Sale

Today we're chatting chatting with Steve Watkins, Author of What Comes After. In case you missed my review you can check it out here. I've asked Steve what kind of things we’d find if he were to have a garage sale of items from his teenage years.From pot to a lock of hair (sounds pretty wild!) Steve gives us the all the dirty details. Check it out:

1. Original subscription to Rolling Stone magazine from my older brother, back when it was considered the hippie music bible.
2. Honda 350cc motorcycle, well-dented from that time a woman pulled out in front of me and I was going too fast to stop so had to lay it down on wet pavement and slide halfway under her car.
3. Ounce of pot.
4. Water pipe and rolling papers.
5. Search warrant.
6. Arrest warrant.
7. Low table I made from a stop sign I found on the side of the road, where I used to always sit cross-legged on the floor and do my homework. When I ever got around to doing my homework.
8. Old copies of The Free Press, an underground newspaper my friends and I put out during high school to protest the war, protest the lame high school curriculum, protest the criminalization of marijuana, protest whatever needed protesting. And also to publish our very serious and seriously angst-ridden poetry.
9. Seriously holey jeans with more patches sewed on than denim left to sew it on. Bellbottoms.
10. A William & Mary Wrestling Team t-shirt that my high school wrestling coach gave me. Threadbare.
11. Snare drum and well-worn drumsticks that I used when I was in the high school band, until I got kicked out for insubordination.
12. Lock of Susan Eaddy’s hair from when I took the bus from North Carolina back down to Florida where we used to live, so I could take her to Homecoming. I’d just gotten my license and somehow managed to back her Dad’s car into her Mom’s on our way to the dance after the game. Susan took the blame. Her dad yelled at her and made us walk. I was a coward and didn’t say anything at the time but confessed everything to Susan’s mom a couple of years ago—40 years after the fact. She forgave me.
13. Umbrella that Debby Crayton’s parents gave me as a Christmas present. They’d asked Debby, who was my girlfriend senior year, if I’d prefer that, or fifty dollars. Debby must have been mad at me for something because she said I would definitely like the umbrella.
14. Hair ties for my long hair that went down to my butt.
15. Draft card.