The garage is lined with meticulously
indexed old magazines, vinyl records,
World War II artifacts, rare stamps,
VHS tapes and vintage fishing rods.
A Hermes 3000 typewriter, framed
oil paintings, ancient Chinese vases.
He told me about a unit
in Hackensack that had belonged
to a socialite. It was heaped
with trash bags containing Prada
dresses, Hermès scarves and jewelry.
There were also empty vodka
bottles, divorce papers and
distressing financial documents.
One evening in 1985,
Mr. Crispo and a gallery assistant
picked up a Norwegian art student named
Eigil Dag Vesti. After a drug-fueled night,
Mr. Vesti was shot dead while naked
and handcuffed. Three weeks later, hikers
discovered his corpse in a smokehouse,
a zipped leather hood over the head.
Mr. Crispo died destitute in 2024
in a Brooklyn nursing facility,
causing his storage unit to go delinquent.
Michael sold a Man Ray painting
and some Walt Kuhn drawings he found
inside for nearly $50,000.
Its contents seemed routine at first —
tool boxes, hammer holsters, saws,
drills, some Spanish-language comic books.
But deep within the clutter, in a tattered
box, Michael found a Purple Heart.
The address brought him to a home
with a rusted white fence in an
immigrant enclave of Union City.
A pair of dust-caked Timberland
boots sat by the entrance. No one
answered Michael’s knocks at the door.
No one answered his calls after he pulled
a phone number through public records.
Then he sent a letter. He is
still waiting to hear back.
People’s lives are in these lockers.
Belongings can tell you a lot
about a person. When you meet
someone, you might think you know them,
but you just don’t.
From A New Jersey Teen Finds Treasure, and More, in Abandoned Storage Units.
Verbatim Poetry 