I just acquired a huge pile of records, for free! But first, this story:

When I was growing up, there was a lady who lived next door named Eleanor. Eleanor was morbidly obese, and a recluse. She rarely, if ever, left her house, and then she only went out onto the porch.

Eleanor had no electricity, because she was afraid of it. So you would see her through her windows fumbling around at night, flashlight in hand. She had cats, but she was not a cat lady. My parents did her shopping for her.

When the whole Y2K thing happened, Eleanor was terrified. She made my parents buy stuff to hoard. She made them buy extra napkins and paper towels, and put them in separate plastic bags, so that she could swing them back and forth, and throw them on top of the many piles of junk in her house.

Eleanor was afraid to allow my dad inside her house. She was also afraid to leave it. Therefore, she never took out her garbage. It just kept piling up inside.

Eventually, she fell and had to be hospitalized. They put her in a nursing home, where she lived for several years until she died.

Her family did not want to deal with this house of hers, understandably. And so, when my sister inquired about buying it, they told her that if she wanted it, she could just have it. Free. Along with everything inside.

While most of the stuff inside was stuff no one would ever want -- bags upon bags of garbage, a refrigerator full of years-old meat, a urine-soaked couch -- there was cool stuff, too. A console TV from the '50s with a round screen, for example.

Or, better yet, a collection of pristine old-country records that look as if they have never been played. These, my sister told me, I could have. If I did not take them, they would go into the Dumpster. Needless to say, I got the hand truck out immediately. "I already threw some out," she said. I screamed. "Oh, they weren't very good anyway. It was all stuff like, 'Sing Along with Jeno Paulucci.'" I wanted to knock her unconscious.

Anyway. Getting the records required going into the house, and that, understandably, required vomiting. I was in there for probably 5 mintues, but I would never go into that place again without a respirator. It is, I gather, a lot cleaner that it was a few days ago. There is no garbage, no couch, no refrigerator. But still, it is moldy and smelly.

Oh,yeah ... my sister removed one box from the closet that she said was the worst smelling of all. She didn't dare open it. "I'm pretty sure it was Snowball," she said.

So now I have all these records, which smell a little bad, but in a normal way. They smell like St. Vincent de Paul -- dusty and a bit mildewy. But they are dry and clean.

I am sort of afraid to bring them into my house. Like maybe they're contaminated or something. Do you think this concern is valid?
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