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Illustration by Mario Noche
Lanny owned a secondhand store across the street from the newspaper I worked at in Michigan. I suppose a thin line separates “junk” from “antique,” but there was no doubt what side of the divide Lanny’s place fell. Lannyland, as he called it, had an awful mildew smell and a stained carpet, and a layer of grime covered everything. I found his eclectic mix of out-of-tune musical instruments, broken typewriters and polyester trousers kind of charming, but even I was appalled by the box of used tighty whities.
At first, I’d wander into Lannyland during my lunch hour and snicker at the curiosities on display. Then I started making the occasional semi-ironic purchase—a “Fat Albert” comic book, a Black Oak Arkansas record. The turning point for me occurred when I saw a “Miami Vice” board game sitting on a high shelf. Lanny had me hooked, and he knew it. I don’t remember how much I paid for the game, but it wasn’t cheap. And the prices crept higher and higher as Lanny enticed me with more of his amazing discoveries.
“Where do you get all this stuff?” I’d ask after buying, say, a “Mork & Mindy” card game.
“Garage sales,” Lanny would respond.
That wasn’t the whole story, I’d later learn. After I made my favorite Lannyland purchase of all time, a lime-green reading chair, Lanny confessed he found the magnificent piece of furniture on the side of the road.
One night, my friend Joel and I ran into Lanny in a 7-Eleven parking lot. He was in his van, and it was clear he was about to embark on his nightly trash-picking rounds. We were both Lannyland devotees—Joel probably even more so than me—and we pestered him to let us ride along. Lanny was reluctant at first, but he eventually relented.
Our interest puzzled him. “I’m kind of embarrassed to admit I do this,” he said. But his spirits perked up as we cruised around town, rifling through trash bags. We treated him like a garbage-can guru, begging him to bestow his secrets upon us: Where do you find the best trash? Do people get angry if they see you digging through their garbage? What does it feel like to make a big discovery?
“It’s like I have
His extrasensory talent failed him on this night, however. He didn’t come away with a single interesting item. But Joel and I were transfixed, nonetheless. It also probably didn’t hurt that we were drunk.
I don’t know how it happened, exactly; everything became a blur after the six-pack of tall boys and the sermon Lanny gave us about the glory of God (turns out he was a hard-core Christian). But somehow Lanny and I ended up sitting in his van, commiserating about female troubles.
My love life was in the toilet at the time. The woman I was crazy about—a hazel-eyed science reporter—had just rejected me. And I didn’t blame her, really. I’d blown my chance. For more than a year, I could have told her how I felt, but I didn’t get up my nerve until she was with someone else.
“Do you love her?” Lanny asked.
“I think so,” I said.
“Then you can’t give up,” he said.
Lanny told me about his own love life, how the woman he was nuts about treated him like garbage. But the suffering was worth it as long as he could remain in her life. I guess he sounded kind of pathetic in hindsight, but I found his devotion touching. I decided unrequited love was better than no love at all.
I stayed friends with the science reporter. In fact, we started to spend even more time together. Hanging out in her apartment one evening, I got the feeling her resistance was wearing down when she abruptly ended a phone conversation with her boyfriend, a graduate student in Pennsylvania, to get back to complaining about the interminable Academy Awards broadcast with me. Shortly thereafter, we kissed for the first time.
Later, she followed me to Ohio when I got a job in Akron, and I returned the favor when she found work in Columbus. After a near-death experience on Lake Erie (another story), I asked her to marry me on the spur of the moment at a Geneva-on-the-Lake hot-dog stand. I repurposed a root beer straw into a ring and slipped it on her finger.
Lanny would have approved.
Dave Ghose is an associate editor for Columbus Monthly.
