Columnist Andrea Brown says goodbye after 12 years: What’s up with that?

EVERETT — Some years ago, Daily Herald copy editor Bill Pedigo said I should write a story about junk drawers.

“Ask people what they keep in their junk drawers,” Bill said. “Everybody has one. It’d be a great story.”

He said his mom kept a pig tooth puller in her junk drawer.

I put Bill’s suggestion in my story junk drawer, an imaginary corner in my head with random ideas to someday pursue.

He’d bring it up from time to time.

“I’m going to write about junk drawers if it’s the last thing I write,” I’d tell him.

Turns out it is.

What’s up with that?

Thank you, Bill, for my last column idea after 10 years of writing “What’s Up With That?” I’m taking one of the voluntary buyouts the Herald’s new ownership is offering to reporters, which in addition to layoffs will cut the news staff by more than half. (Yikes!)

It was tempting to stay on. I’ve worked in newspapers since 1985 and can’t imagine a day without deadlines. But I’m 66, and I’ve got eight grandkids to spoil. Time to “graduate,” as grandgal Mira, 8, puts it.

For my farewell column, I could go on about all the warm, weird and wonderful people I met.

A photographer once remarked, “I’d like to put all of Andrea’s crazy people in one room.”

Heck, I’d like to invite them all to my house for a party.

The thrifty spiffy dude at Value Village. The grouchy chef in Mukilteo. The guy with 24 Weber grills in Grotto. The artist with thousands of rhinestones glued on her car. The grandma who makes THC-infused soda pop for pot shops. The Lake Stevens mom whose water broke at Costco. Peanut, the singing robot sushi server in Lynnwood. And, of course, a few Bigfoots.

This column dates back to 2014 when then-editor Neal Pattison asked everyone to come up with ideas for new content. “What’s Up With That?” was on the list I wrote off the top of my head, really as a joke. Features editor Aaron Swaney insisted I do it. The first column was about why that giant fiberglass Muffler Man stands on the roof of a building on Hewitt Avenue. It ran with a cartoon mug of me drawn by my daughter.

To my surprise, the column won journalism awards over the years. But what I’m most proud of are the bonds with readers.

I could go on about all the nice messages I have received from readers over the years. Please keep them coming. I’m at reporterbrown@gmail.com.

Not that I didn’t get any complaints. A favorite is the guy who objected when I wrote, “What the cluck?” So I used it again a few years later, just to see if he was reading. He was.

There are countless fond memories of people letting me step into their lives. Now I can’t just go around talking to strangers, traipsing through yards and asking nosy questions anymore. My husband is so glad.

I’ve also written hundreds of regular stories about food, ferries, lotteries, weather, Benson Boone, Gordon Ramsay and Mukilteo politics.

I got to do so many really cool things.

I often have to convince people this is work. Hard to do when I’m at a drive-in movie on the clock. Or scoping out a sex toy store. Or digging razor clams. Or exploring the inside of Rucker Tomb.

“It’s more like your hobby,” my favorite police chief told me as we ate giant tater tots and slurped frosty mugs of root beer.

Don’t get me started about the many great co-workers I’ve had and the friends I’ve made along the way. Don’t make me cry.

But, as my old editor pal Eric Stevick used to say, I digress.

This is a story about junk drawers, Bill. As promised.

I like this quote I found while Googling: “I think of the junk drawer in my kitchen and the collection of artifacts it holds that tell many tales of family, friends and events that form the ‘stuff’ of my life.”

That is a metaphor for my 11 years, 9 months and 2 days at The Daily Herald.

Junk drawers are a refuge for stray game pieces, odd screws and knickknacky things of ambiguous value that we just can’t let go. It was hard for me to let go of a lifetime of stringing stray words together to form stories someone just might enjoy reading.

But I digress.

A story on the website “It’s a Southern Thing” about weird items people have in junk drawers included:

• a clown nose;

• onion goggles;

• a customized Latex face mask of Stevie Nicks from 1980;

• “Someone’s jaw bone. A deer, maybe? Not sure;”

• “A hoof pick for my horse.”

Makes Bill’s mom’s pig tooth puller seem normal.

It seems junk drawers aren’t some American quirk.

I found this thread on Reddit asking if junk drawers are a thing in other countries.

Germany: “If you say ‘Küchenschublade’ everyone in that household knows it’s that infamous kitchen drawer.”

France: “I personally always called these ‘fourre-tout’ (stuff everything) or ‘tiroir à bordel’ (messy drawer).”

UK: “I have a ‘shite drawer’ full of random miscellaneous stuff.”

Bill, I should have known you were on to something big.

I still have a few dozen other ideas stuffed in my imaginary junk drawer of story ideas. I never kept a written idea file. I’d just reach into my “shite” drawer and fish one out like it was a rubber band or X-acto knife or stale chocolate bunny I’d stashed for later.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll reach in again.

Andrea Brown: 425-422-7598; reporterbrown@gmail.com; Twitter: @reporterbrown.