The Thin & Wavy Line Between 'Just Enough' and 'Way Too Many'
An Aspergian Chronicle

Before starting properly, let me give one wonderful advantage of life here in Mexico...I can walk in to a pharmacy and buy almost any medicinal compound I care to purchase, without let, hindrance, restriction or prescription. This afternoon, I seized el toro by his cuernos and went to Farmacias Similares for an SSRI. I had decided to start myself on 50mg Sertraline ('Aluprex' brand) - a packet of 20 tablets cost MN$180, less than 10 pounds sterling - to see if I can lift the gray clouds that frequently hover overhead these days. The other face of this attempt is the catharsis that follows below...

I have written, in the past and at a personal level, on the nature of, what I have considered to be, a hypermanic tendency of mine. On reading and reflection, however, I have begun to wonder whether there is an Aspergian strand woven in to it. This tendency manifests itself in the near-compulsion to hoard examples of a certain class of object, or of a specific type within that general class. There is no rationale, seemingly, for what constitutes and admirable quality for addition to the 'collection', yet neither is it entirely random.

Thus far, it seems to have struck me in phases - presumably as interest is lost or shifted. Its most recent, and longest lasting, manifestation began in early 2001. I was studying for final exams in a Bachelor's degree when my attention was diverted by Ebay offerings of Britsh designed and built, portable, tube radios of the 'suitcase' or 'handbag' type (usually known as 'lunchbox portables' in the USA). I began to acquire examples, differentiate between marques, gather information and service data, catalogue them on a website I authored - all while exams were looming large.

This interest was concurrent with a similar fascination over 'Hallicrafters' brand, metal-cased, tabletop communications receivers as well as other diversifications in to vintage radio test equipment and heavy, ex-military 'boat-anchor' sets. These threads of interest and acquisition built towards a frenzy in summer 2003 when I allowed myself to take full advantage of our impending move to Mexico as it offered large volumes of shipping space and easy finance from a property sale.

There was a lull, at this point, as I took stock whilst assembling the shipping manifest. I wondered how I was to receive shipped purchases from the Great American Cornucopia that is Ebay once we were in Mexico. Sure, the wife had relatives in Houston as well as on the Texas border near McAllen but I couldn't very well abuse their patience and goodwill with the kind of volume package receipts that had given me, so far:

• 100+ British portables
• 11 Hallicrafters sets from the 'S-38' series
• 16 ex-military receivers - each weighing 100lbs+
• 8 oscilloscopes - including a monstrous 120lb, tube driven 'Tektronix'
• 5 signal generators - all tube driven, low frequency, very heavy and quite useless

There was only one thing to do - buy more!! But how was I to do this? High shipping costs from the UK, to my newly acquired mailbox at a receiving facility in McAllen, ruled out any further British gear and, in any event, the focus of interest was shifting again.

From early 2004 onwards, the Zenith 'Trans-Oceanic' portable (but only the H500 and 600 series sets) became the target of attention and, over the next few years, some 40 odd examples were acquired. These were joined by a 'small' selection (about two dozen, or so) of unusual examples of portable radios by RCA and General Electric. In late 2006, however, the attentive distraction was caught by examples of the plain, brown-bakelite cased table radio of the 'All-American Five' design from the 1940's. These were plentiful, cheap and easy to repair and - by Summer 2008 - some 25 examples had been acquired from Ebay and 'followed me home' to be stacked and racked. Space in my workshop was now at a premium. Physically, there was no place left to put anything and shelving at high-level was in evidence in the laundry room - much to wife's chagrin.

Now, moving all this gear in 2003 had taken about 800 cubic feet of shipping space - half a container. I had disposed of just seven radios in five years but acquired a multitude of others. I just this minute counted up and there are well nigh on 200 radios...of which just a mere handful (less than 10) have been restored to working condition. And this despite more examples of test gear, boxes of spare tubes, cleaning & restoring materials, tools (both specialist and general), racks of drawers of replacement resistors, diodes, capacitors, lamps, fuses than might be considered 'normal' or reasonable...(sigh)

In the Summer of 2008, there was an unexpected twist when I saw on Ebay (where else) that semi-professional SLR camera bodies - especially the Nikon FE and FM series - were selling at around US$50 for good, clean examples, without lenses. This was terrifically cheap, compared to what they had cost when new in the late 1970's, as I had salivated over them as a spotty schoolboy. My interest was further stroked and spurred by the discovery that Kodak now made black-and-white film for the C-41 developing process, which meant that any corner drugstore with one of those wonderful Noritsu minilabs could now handle B/W film in less than an hour.

Within a few short months, I was the proud owner of five such examples of Japanese engineering. And yet, whilst browsing one day, I saw that there was an even better example, a potential ne plus ultra, as I saw, with a certain spine-tingling inevitability, that good, clean, lens-less examples of the Nikon F2 - a fully mechanical, professional camera body - could be had for around US$150. They say the Nikon F2 is a camera tough enough to fight off the rioters, photograph the demonstration then use to hammer the nail in to the wall to hang the picture.

Before I knew it, and before I had yet to expose but a single frame of film, I had four, brute-heavy F2's sitting in front of me. These were cleaned and encased with the FE's and the FM. Yet I was stymied. Original Nikkor lenses were, even used, incredibly expensive - often two or three times the price of the camera body. Yet, with clenched jaw and cold sweats, I set to find examples of Soviet medium-format lenses as cheaper alternatives to the Nikkors. But these were all for the east-European 'Pentacon Six' type camera system and so required an adaptor for the Nikon F lens mount. Fingers flying, mind unthinking, hazed and dazed, I bought a shift-correction adaptor (for architectural photography), a Mir-Arsenal 33mm lens, a great gibbous bulb of a Arsat 16mm fisheye lens and, in fevered, adrenaline-drenched fury, a Nikon F4.

All this brought the body count up to 11 cameras (including what I had already), 17 lenses, seven 72mm B/W filters, nine 52mm filters, two exposure meters, two demountable, waist-level viewfinders (for the Nikon F2), a tripod, a flash gun, a motor drive for the FE/FM series, a depleted bank account and a guilty conscience - although the latter two things take up no room at all.

And I still had to take but one roll of film...Still, I was yet to properly clean and restore a radio to be sold.

Hypomania - and now there's the move to another country in the offing...

The hobby, seemingly, has become the acquisition of these things for its own sake, rather than the restoration and use of the things themselves. Their acquisition is not for the pleasure in the actual keeping and maintaining of the article (out of sight, out of mind), but rather for the search for examples, reviews, information, opinions, parts, history etc. It is in the anticipation of the look, smell, feel of the article being sought and its effect upon the senses. This is heightened somewhat by the logistics of delivery and the fact that this delays the gratification somewhat.

Sometimes, I catch myself browsing ebay still, looking at such curios as bubble sextants (for air navigation), slide rules, Soviet mechanical watches and old kitchen appliances - the ephemera of technologically simpler times - and I feel my attention, my 'want-ometer', begin to twitch anew...oh-oh!

And, in similar vein, I had wondered whether I had approached other aspects of my free-time use in the same manner. Certainly there had been websites, for example, on radios, the store, my daughter, a proposed expansion to the store etc, and that these were begun in a white heat of enthusiasm but have since languished in various stages of completion. More recently, there have been blogs - mainly serving as an outlet for frustrations, both real and imagined. At last count, there were four of these, of which one is abandoned, one is reserved and the other two are written to but sporadically. To a certain extent, my written contributions to other people's blog postings (and, again, more recently, to for dealing with travel to, and living in, Mexico) have also served as an orthographic safety-valve of sorts, that can allow for finely whetted and honed sarcasm or the blunter weapon of a coarse schadenfreude.

And now, the momma and grand-pappy of 'em all, a move to another country, wherein I will be expected to provide the principal means of support. I wonder how long I will be able to maintain a high level of enthusiasm and dedication for this newest endeavour? Especially in light of potential difficulties in securing employment.

At this point, I run out of steam, let out another sigh and look out of the window, again. I have no answer...yet.