I don’t think of myself as a peculiar person. Not particularly out of the mainstream.

Well, aside from this one thing I’ve done. Which I can’t really defend or justify.

I have nearly every San Bernardino Sun sports section from August, 1976, through February, 2008.

Nearly every one. All 11,520 of them, if I’ve added up the days correctly. That is, I meant to have ALL of them all, but I concede I might be missing one or two, here or there. But not for lack of trying.

And they make for a mountain of newspapers … 25 boxes of them.

Why did I do that?

At first, it was wanting to keep track of what I wrote, as kid journalist. Rather than clip the stuff I wrote, it seemed easier just to keep an entire section. And I did that for three-plus years.

Then I became sports editor, and the whole section was “mine,” right? Even on days when you don’t work, when you run a section you’re still responsible for it. And here’s something resembling a good reason: If I had all 365/366 papers from the previous year at home, when it came time for contests, I could go over the whole year without having to hang around the office.

So there went those papers, into the stacks. Year after year after year …

Eventually, I began buying boxes, U-Haul “small” cardboard boxes, and each one held a bit more than a year of papers.

I remember my mover — in 1989 — poking fun at me for having all this paper. Maybe 15 boxes, back then, at maybe 30 pounds each. “What are you going to do with those? When are you ever going to look at them?”

Fair questions. But I just shrugged. And kept saving.

(I have some pack-rat tendencies; but this is the only area where I just cannot let go.)

I liked the idea of having my own copies. It actually helped, two weeks ago, when I dug out the copy of the section in which Claude Anderson’s obit appeared and found out how old he was when he died. This, mind you, in an era (now) when The Sun no longer has bio files and lacks a functioning microfilm viewing machine.

Bloody good thing I kept those papers from 1996, right?

I should note that my collection has some organization. Well, to this extent: The sections are piled in chronological order, 98 percent of the time; and I marked on the outside of the box the copies contained therein. Like, “Aug. 1999-Oct. 2000”.

I reacquainted myself with the physical realties of three decades of sports sections a few weeks ago, when I moved them out of a garage in Highland and into a storage unit about a mile away. It made for two loads in the back of a pickup, and covered one entire wall of the storage unit to a depth of five boxes — about 6 feet high.

No, I haven’t spent a lot of time going back and looking at old sections. Even those a year old. But the key here is … I COULD look, if I wanted to. If I suddenly had an urge to see what the Christmas Day, 1978 section looked like … I could have my hands on it in an hour. (It would be “in a matter of minutes” until a few weeks ago, but I’m now 72 miles from my papers.)

And there is some good news here: Since being laid off by The Sun, I haven’t kept a single section. The streak is broken! The mountain of boxes will get no higher than it is now.

The question I really can’t answer is this: What happens to all those papers when I’m gone? (As in dead.) Well, I harbor no illusions. Someone will have to load them up and take them to a recycle station. I hope it’s someone with a strong back … and I hope the price of recycled newsprint is up, at that moment in history.

Could be a not-so-little gold mine there.