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I found the term in the DARE, the Dictionary of American Regional English,
which, for a dictionary, is GREAT reading. Currently I believe it is about
80% complete and they are working on the last few letters of the alphabet.
I did a quick search on Altavista and here's what I found:
URL: http://www.tenhand.com/clew/blog/archives/000329.html
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culch
Culch (or cultch) is stuff that isn't actually trash, but is waiting to be reused. It usually lives behind the barn. The word comes from the bed of crushed shells and rock that oysters breed on. It's what a bricoleur wants to have around, or sometimes what a compulsive hoarder thinks they're keeping.
My mnemonic false derivation is "cultural mulch". There are different mulches, some fast, some slow, some not as useful as they seem. The town dump can set aside a section for culch. A middling city can support several exchanges. A native NYNYer once described that City's culch system to me as one involving neither planning nor storage. No-one has room; storage is expensive; quite useful stuff goes out to the sidewalk daily, so that those who need stuff don't hoard it in advance. Instead, they go out for circuitous contemplative walks and trust that the city will provide. After all, you only need something good enough to be adapted.
That's probably a tropical system, no matter NY's physical climate. Cold hardwood forests don't cycle matter nearly as quickly; instead they can store carbon a long long time. (My mother inherited her father's culch pile, as well as her mother's store of probably-reusable buttons and cloth and pots. I don't think the domestic culch was called culch, though.) The classic New England culch pile rewards long planning by reducing dependency on the market. To investigate; does Braudel mention culch, when distinguishing between the three layers of economic activity?
I think it isn't culch when it changes ownership, either; the rag-and-bone man in Waste Not Want Not, and the trashpickers in Land of Desire or Gaffer Hexham in Our Mutual Friend, are pursuing a commercial trade.
I wonder what the words for it are in other languages.
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In the original quote the word "bricoleur" was in italics. Maybe some of you
French speakers (French Frie, or others) can help with this term. Just maybe,
it means a Brick driver/collector/maintainer/restorer...... (I doubt it but
it sure sounds good!)
So there you have it!
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George Downs Bartlesville, Heart of the USA!
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