As it appears on paper, NTAA could be some sort of government agency, or maybe a charitable trust. Actually, the letters stand for my credo, the words I live by: "Never throw anything away."

I have delved into this subject in previous columns, at one point using the imagery of the fifth labor of Hercules: cleansing the stables of King Augeas of Elis of some 30 years' accumulation of animal waste. I likened my own house, with its mass of papers, documents and books, to the Augean stables, but with a lower nitrogen content.

However, as I reflected on the fact that I am approaching fourscore years, it occurred to me that I should be making some disposition of this kind of material in order that the task not devolve on my heirs. So the other day I girded up my resolve and adopted a new credo: LSD. No, I'm not getting into the drug culture. LSD in this case stands for "Let's start disposing." One of my first objectives was a heavily burdened bookshelf on which there happened to be a volume titled Sewage Disposal Works.

"Hah!" I said to myself. "Here's a logical candidate for the Book-Go-Round—if they'll take it."

I remembered having gotten that book when I was writing newspaper stories about a sewer bond election, but now it was just so much, uh, residue, and it had to go. Then NTAA loomed and squelched LSD. It suddenly occurred to me that this book is a symbol. If what I have here are the Augean Stables, then what is more relevant than a book on sewage disposal? In a mythological context, would Hercules have chosen to approach his task with the activated-sludge process or trickling filters? No way. He had to play the big man and divert a couple of rivers to flush out the stables. Still, the imagery was there: Augean stables, sewage treatment. I took it as a sign that I shouldn't, well, flush.

So then I started looking through some of the things that I just couldn't throw out. Rising to the surface was a clipping from the Jan. 24, 1922, issue of the San Jose Evening News. It was a report of a talk given by Mrs. Fremont Older, wife of the famed newspaper editor, before the Cupertino De Oro Club, and her subject was Saratoga history. She recounted the story of Saratoga's cannon, acquired by the citizens in the early 1850s when the village was McCartysville. It was a muzzle-loader, used for patriotic and similar celebrations.

One such occasion was in January 1864, when the railroad line from San Francisco to San Jose was opened. The cannon was placed alongside the present Big Basin Way, near the downtown intersection. It was loaded with what apparently was too much gunpowder and was tamped up to the muzzle with wet hay. When it was fired, it "burst into a thousand pieces," Mrs. Older said. The men firing the cannon had wisely gotten behind an oak tree, and there were no reported casualties.

I remember having heard the cannon story from Luther Cunningham when I was about 12 or 13. A friend and I had gone to his real estate office—located in the old Peninsular Railway interurban station, where the Village post office is today—to learn something about Saratoga history. The sequel, as related by Cunningham, was that a man cultivating the orchard where Neale's Hollow is today turned up the breech knob with his plow. I don't have a date on that but do know that it was some years later.

A later cannon sequel occurred in 1975, when the McWilliams House was dedicated in the new Saratoga Historical Park. This is detailed in another NTAA clipping from the July 12, 1975, Saratoga News. There were two cannons that looked like miniature naval armament of the Old Ironsides era. It was quite a Fourth of July celebration, and it was for dedicating the new Historical Park. Church bells rang, the fire horn blared, the high school band played and the cannons boomed. The McWilliams House, which had faced imminent demolition in its original location on Big Basin Way, was saved by a community effort in the form of the Saratoga Heritage Committee, which raised the money to have it moved to city-owned property.

What will become of the McWilliams House now that the Chamber of Commerce has moved out will no doubt be the subject of future news stories to be preserved through NTAA. And though the addiction lasted hardly an instant, I can still say that I'm LSD-rehabilitated.