More than just an old box to me ...
I’ve always enjoyed history – reading historical novels or old newspapers, going to cemeteries, touring historical spots. Though I mostly enjoyed being an English major in college, I could kick myself now for not taking more history classes.
Perhaps my love of history is derived from a feeling that I do not know the mysteries or stories surrounding my own family. My ancestors hail from Sicily, Ireland and Germany, and when those people made it to America and traveled west, they scattered. Even my more recent and immediate family do not come from a common place. There is no shared farmland or creaking farmhouse with which we return to year in and year out and tell old stories. Rather, we travel near and far, from suburbs populated to bursting to one relative’s house or another. And I would say for most people it is this way: Siblings and their children and their cousins growing up alongside one another is not something too often found anymore.
So it was with interest that five years ago, after we graduated from college, that I followed my then fiance to Princeton, his hometown. Princeton and the surrounding farmland was like an anomaly to me. I had spent most of my youth in Algonquin, Ill., in a cookie-cutter house in a subdivision. There were countless mini-malls, grocery stores, nail and hair salons and restaurants on every street corner. By the time I came of age, there were no bare spaces to be found, aside from unused parking lots.
When my husband drove me down some of the old streets in Princeton, I sat mouth agape in the passenger seat, at the original brick paved roads, at the beautiful, majestic, old homes. I was amazed and oddly envious to learn there were families in this county that continue to farm the land of their grandparents, and some even farther back than that. To have the privilege of working in the same place of your ancestors must be a gratifying feeling.
It is in this way that I still feel a little bit of a wanderer. Though I am married and have a daughter, a home, pets and possessions, there are days when I feel a bit of an outcast.
It was with my persistent desire to have something solid, something with history attached to it, that I first laid eyes on an old traveling trunk at a garage sale in the summer of 2007. I called my husband excitedly as a friend stood by, guarding my find in the homeowner’s yard. How I would get it home in the five or so pieces it was already in and restore it was beyond me, but I wanted it. Irritatingly, my husband stood his ground and adamantly said “No way. Where would we put it? Leave it.” It didn’t matter to me that the trunk was not worth a lot of money. I was just amazed that, as the owner said, these traveling trunks are everywhere; many families have them hidden away in attics or spare bedrooms. I was just so intrigued that such enigmatic pieces of history were just stored away. Most are empty now, but where did they come from and what did they once hold? I’m mostly naive and silly when it comes to these things, but when I latch onto something, you’ll have a heck of time getting me to let go.
Though my husband said no then, I kicked myself once more for not just jumping in and going for it. For an entire year I turned the thought of the trunk over and over in my mind, wishing I could go back and get it. I know many will smirk and shake their heads at this – the trunks are bulky pieces of half rotting wood that once stored old quilts, so what’s the big deal?
Well, it was a big deal to me and so once more in the summer of 2008, I happened to be at a garage sale at another old home on a whim and a hope. Sure enough, my Mother spotted a trunk sitting in the lawn. It was in much better shape than the last one I’d seen, but the wood had been painted pink and the brass gold. The interior had a pungent smell to knock you over, but it was with determination and a grin that I bought the big trunk anyway. I didn’t know what my husband would say when he saw it, but it was too late, the old hunk of wood was ours.
Another year has gone by, and its intended use has changed from a toy chest, out of fear that it could slam shut and cut off our beloved daughter’s tiny fingers, to a coffee table. It’s now drying from fresh coats of brown and maroon paint, dutifully put on by my husband, to match our earth-toned family room. My task is to paper the inside with red wallpaper, despite the fact that I’ve never wallpapered anything in my life. I’m both anxious and excited, with a good dose of dread for my acknowledged lack of crafting skills.
But, when it’s done my old restored trunk that I got for $20 will sit in our renovated family room. I don’t know its age or its history, but I stare at it and imagine anyway.
If you visit, you can stare at it too. Just don’t open the lid. Not only will the smell knock you over, and the wallpapering job make you grimace, but the storage of board games in its interior will surely take away all of its nostalgia in one fell swoop.
Jessica Gray resides in Princeton. She can be reached at anmlhouse5@live.com.
