Digging for the past

Digging for the past

Posted on August 11th, 2022 by Scott Warnock

I have a memory that when we were kids, my brother, several friends, and I buried a time capsule in our backyard in a large hole that we would dig some summers.

This hole that we would dig was a source of great fun. We would dig it and then spend most of our time in there with our Micronauts and Star Wars figures and toys like that (what we collectively called “men”).

It had other purposes too. A favorite game was “find the hole”: Someone would be blindfolded and wander around the yard while the rest of us called out “hot” and “cold.” The goal was to “find” the hole, which meant you would topple (painfully) into it. Once you did, it was the next person’s turn.

Some laughs!

Following my dad’s passing, my brother and I (rather quickly) sold the old house. Pete and I decided, after years of occasional discussion about the actual existence of the time capsule, that we had one last chance.

Pete lived eight houses from me, and we have been best friends since third grade. He was in on all of it: wiffleball, jarts (including the punctured gutter incident), side-yard football, and playing with those mini dudes.

On a hot Memorial Day with the closing of the old place looming, he and I met down in Berlin.

Locating the site of the former hole was easy. The indentation from our dig-the-hole days was surprisingly obvious, right next to a derelict shed that was covered with a blue tarp secured by binder clips. (The old man was nothing if not resourceful.)

We each brought a shovel. As he cruises into his golden years, Pete may not be svelte, but he can still wield a shovel. Down we went, digging away and wishing we hadn’t turned down the neighbor’s offer of Gatorades after we had given him a ladder.

We didn’t know exactly what we were after. I told a somewhat skeptical Pete that in my mind’s eye, we had buried in some kind of secure plastic container (such as a two-liter Coke bottle) notes and other mementos of that era. Pete had some doubt that we had done this at all, but my brother provided at least the causality by reminding us that Berlin, during our nation’s bi-centennial, had buried its own time capsule. Not only did that create the likely source of own capsule idea, but it put a timestamp on when we buried it, probably from 1976 to 1978!

We came across a rusted tire iron, but it was close to the surface, so we decided that was a relic of some other event.

We dug deeper and deeper, widening the hole as we went. We dug to the point where we figured our nine- or eleven-year-old selves would have reached their limits, and then a little beyond. Nothing. We started feeling despondent.

Then we saw something. Something metal glinting at the bottom of the hole. We were almost giddy. We reached into the dirt and pulled out…

…a spoon?

This was stupid and unsatisfying, but the spoon was too far down to be a random find. We were onto something. We became excited, and we traded time in the hole in rapid shifts, scooping up earth. Then we found… another spoon. Then another. In all, we found five mismatched spoons.

We also started finding shards of plastic. It seemed clear they were part of Leggs eggs pantyhose holders. Did we put stuff in them, ignorant to the fact that these flimsy containers would surely crack–perhaps even as soon as we buried them?!

We found a metal toy gun. Then a badly broken plastic toy gun. A Tropicana orange juice lid.

We kept at it, but that was it. In one final tease, I thought I saw the side of a condensation-filled two-liter bottle, but it was merely a glittering rock. We were becoming delusional.

Here is the total take:

Looking at it, we wondered if we had once again, as we all do sometimes, inflated the reality of youth with hopeful memories. Weren’t we these precocious kids, cleverly storing away wisdom for our future selves? In actuality, it appeared we couldn’t even muster the smarts to find suitable containers.

On the other hand, we were creative and innovative enough, had the wherewithal, to devise a time capsule, to envision future selves and think about communicating with those strangers. And we made it there: We made it to 40+ years later, still friends, giving us at least an opportunity to play as archaeologists seeking our mini-civilization of mid- to late-70s Berlin, NJ. Maybe we were child geniuses!

But, still, what was with all the damn spoons?!

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Scott Warnock

Scott Warnock is a writer and teacher who lives in South Jersey. He is a professor of English at Drexel University, where he is also the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education in the College of Arts and Sciences. Father of three and husband of one, Scott is president of a local high school education foundation and spent many years coaching youth sports.