The Blue Box

I’ve got a little blue plastic box that holds some of the detritus of my life. It contains a jumble of small objects that, for some reason or other, I decided to keep and shove into the box. It’s about five inches by eight inches and about three inches tall. I have no idea where this box came from or how long I’ve had it, but it must have been around for many decades at least.

 The items in the box are fragments of memory, sometimes sharp edged, sometimes dulled beyond remembrance, of what I used to be and, in some cases, still am. They bring forth flashes of times otherwise lost to my memory. I’m surprised by some of the things I’ve found, amused by others and perplexed by many of them. Among the items are:

·       a very small zip lock bag containing four translucent rough red pebbles. They may be freshly mined rubies or bits of frankincense or fossilized grapes. I have no idea what they are or their provenance and value;

·       a very tarnished silver baby rattle with my baby teeth marks in it. I must have been quite a biter;

·       a hand-crafted wooden whistle, obviously constructed by a child, possibly one of mine;

·       some racing stuff, including: a bit of broken wheel from a formula ford that I crashed at Road America; a uniform patch from Thunder Valley, a racing community for women race car drivers that I founded; a large pin commemorating the 50^th Anniversary of Racing at Elkhart Lake; and a die cast Mario Andretti Havoline IndyCar;

·       two pins about Unitarian Universalism, one that says ‘We Like U’ and the other that is simply a depiction of UU’s flaming chalice;

·       a manila envelope holding an Eisenhower silver dollar with a nick in it made by a small caliber bullet and two Susan B. Anthony silver dollar coins. Another envelope holds three fairly common nickels and another Eisenhower dollar with a red, heart-shaped sticker on it that says ‘Love’. These all may have come from my uncle, since he frequently gave me things he considered valuable, but I have no memory of any of it;

·       an elegant and highly unusual pin, very small, very deep, almost tire shaped, blue with white lines that could be tire spokes, enclosed in its own small plastic box with a clear plastic cover. Your guess is as good as mine.

·       A rubber-banded collection of formal portraits of my two children at various ages which no longer could be crammed into my wallet; also, a similar portrait of my goddaughter, whom I have ignored, to my great shame;

·       a hand-made button with a portrait of Aaron Siskind, a great American photographer and my professor at the Institute of Design. The button was created in an unsuccessful protest to the firing of this seminal artist;

·       an oblong silver button depicting what might be a television screen with a lightning bolt or mark of Zorro running through it. This and a similar ‘Wild Chicago’ button may be associated with the same event, organization, group of colleagues, or something that occasioned the crafting and distribution of buttons. The meaning of these objects eludes me entirely;

·       a silver Whistle Stop police-style whistle that was part of a community safety program that I helped create while working with a group of Alinsky-style, direct action community organizers in Chicago;

·       a simple one-photo viewer which, when held to the eye, reveals a picture of me and my then five year old son, walking hand in hand, probably at an amusement park or other venue;

·       some political stuff, including: a large blue button that says ‘Another Yalie for Dukakis’; a cardboard pass card that the Democratic ward heelers handed out when Harold Washington ran for mayor of Chicago, urging voters to cast their ballots for Bernie Epton, the Republican candidate; pass cards that I handed out in front of polling stations in that same election that said ‘Vote Democratic, Punch 8 for Washington, be sure your ballot is initialed by the judge’;

·       Two heavy and substantial buttons, one recognizing me as an employee of the Department of Homeland Security, the other as an employee of FEMA, which is that program within the DHS for which I was recognized by the first button. (Got it?);

·       registration cards including: my original Social Security card, signed with my youthful signature; my Selective Service Registration Certificate and my Selective Service Notice of Classification (I-Y); a Yale University Student Identification Card and an Illinois Institute of Technology Student ID Card (with a  picture of me sporting a full beard;

·       and a very nice, expensive-looking pin of the insignia of the AFL/CIO, which produces absolutely no memories.

I suppose I ought to add a closing paragraph that sums up all these things with a profound articulation, psychological or archaeological, of their meaning. But I haven’t a clue. You can try. Give it a shot!