One Man’s Junk Could Be This Man’s Antique

Every so often Gustav Bode slips off to his back yard to relax among the 65 Monterey pine trees he planted there 40 years ago.

“I go 21 hours a day,” said Bode, who is 65, as he walked through his forest amid the debris that dominates the grounds around his house. “A person can’t sleep when he’s full of arthritis, so he’s got to find a place to relax.”

Scattered among the trees is a world-class assortment of clutter that the city of Anaheim and Bode himself describe as junk. “It took me 30 years to accumulate all this,” he said. “You name it and I’ve got it. And if I don’t have it, I know where it’s at.”

“But it’s all good junk that just needs a little work,” he said in defense of his collection.

Bode’s “good junk” includes a 1912 metal doctor’s examining table, a 1942 Jeep, an old fire pump truck, an 1905 surrey, an iron lung, 23 horse-drawn snow sleighs, a 1912 Edison cylinder portable record player, a 20-foot high Santa Claus figure, a few small statues of leprechauns, 40 old vacuum cleaners, an old milk truck and a flagpole. He flies the American flag every day.

Everything except the flagpole, however, is in a state of disrepair.

His house, too, is filled with old things. In addition, he said, he rents a couple of storage facilities to store valuable items such as a 1912 Model T Ford and a double-deck English bus with a wet bar.

“This is a junk yard,” admits Bode, who last week got a second notice from the city to clean up the junk, especially the items in his front yard.

He said he now plans to build fences in the front and back to shield it all from view.

“I’m sure a nuisance where I’m at,” Bode said, adding, “That’s because people who don’t like antiques don’t like me. But most of my neighbors like me.”

Last year, Bode said, he paid the city a $250 fine rather than clean up all the stuff.

“I was ready to go to jail for a month,” he said chuckling. “I need the rest.”

What he would really like to do, he said, is open a three-building museum in his yard to be called “Gus’ Place” and dedicate it to America’s veterans. He served 22 months in the Navy during World War II, he said.

Now retired, he has worked, he said, as a milk deliveryman, a school janitor, a movie projectionist and a ride operator at Disneyland.

He also has run for the Anaheim City Council four times, being defeated decisively on each occasion.

In his lifetime, Bode said, he has made and spent a good deal of money. “I invested pretty good,” he said. He got the idea when he was young that there could be a profit in other people’s discards, he said. He had been following a man who was picking up bottles and rags. “You know, when he got ready to leave, he got into a nice big convertible touring Packard. I said to myself, ‘That’s for me,’ ” said Bode, adding that he trades his collectibles for other pieces.

“My dad didn’t bring up dumb kids, you know. Now I do as well as I can.”

A dozen junior high and high school students will have experienced some real hunger pangs by the time they finish a 30-hour fast that will begin Friday night at the Garden Grove United Methodist Church.

The purpose of the Fast-a-Thon is to raise money, through pledges, that will be used to help alleviate hunger throughout the world, said Garden Grove resident Shirley Kellogg, 61. Kellogg, along with her husband, Frank, 62, will monitor the group.

“They will only be allowed bouillon, water, tea, coffee and sugarless gum,” she said.

“We’ll hold worship services at regular eating times to fill them spiritually instead of with food,” she said. The students will also hear speakers and see films that describe world hunger. But they’ll have some diversions, too. “We’ll be holding the fast in the church lounge where they can play pinball machines and video machines,” she said.

Acknowledgments--The 80-member chorus of the Mission Viejo chapter of Sweet Adelines Inc. was the first-place winner at a regional competition in Long Beach. The group will represent Region 21 of the organization at the international competition in October next year in Salt Lake City. La Habra resident Stan Sharpe is the director of the chorus.