Memoirs

A Life in a Trunk

It’s Army Green and measures 16” wide by 30” long and 13” deep, not a big trunk but heavy when full as it was when I got it. Although it’s made of hard cardboard, it has reinforcing black metal strips wrapping all the corners, and leather carrying straps are attached at each end. Two black metal flip locking devices adorn the front on each side and there’s a funny-looking locking device in the middle. An Elgin padlock hangs from the top catch, locked but with no key, catching nothing from the bottom. A black metal band goes all the way around under these locks.

I have no idea how Uncle Johnny acquired the trunk or where it came from. I don’t remember ever seeing it before. It came to my home in Florida via I-95 from Delaware, a trip back home Jim and I took together in 2000, a trip for a funeral.

Uncle Johnny was born in 1914. He was the oldest of nine children, the son of Arthur and Emily, farmers in Caroline County, Maryland, a county on the east side of the Chesapeake Bay. He worked the farm with his Dad until 1952 when his Dad’s health required him to give it up. Uncle Johnny never married, and he continued to live with his parents after they moved to Kent County, Delaware. Not well-educated, he found a job driving a truck for a furniture company, Liebman’s, in Dover.

His Dad died in 1960, and Uncle Johnny took care of his Mom, continuing to work for Liebman’s until his retirement at age sixty-five in 1979. His Mom, my Grandmother, passed away in 1981. Uncle Johnny lived alone until he died on May 20, 2000. He was 85. I inherited his trunk.

I didn’t know a lot about Uncle Johnny, he was quiet, not a talker. After we moved to Florida I called him a few times each year and always sent his favorite oranges and grapefruit for Christmas. Now, that seems like so little. I know he had to be lonely.

He was a good son, dutiful and kind. I remember hearing about the bursitis in his elbow. Someone said as a young man, a car had sideswiped him, damaging his arm as it rested on the open window. And I remember, when I was five or six years old, begging for bologna and ice cream as I accompanied him to the store.

He loved going to the annual Delaware State Fair in Harrington and also to the horse races held there each fall, trotters and pacers. He always planted a garden, wow those tomatoes, and every time I asked about it, he never failed to tell me to plant marigolds at the sides of my garden to keep away the bugs. Turns out, he knew what he was talking about.

He visited us once in Florida when another brother made the trip in 1983. A few months before, Johnny learned he had prostate cancer, had the surgery, and made changes to his lifestyle. He appeared at our house in blue jeans and white tennis shoes, and at 69, he got around better than I did. During his visit he asked for Special K and a glass of cranberry juice for breakfast. But still he was very quiet.

When Jim and I returned from Delaware with the trunk, I was more than anxious to see what was inside, my nosy nature being what it is. As I write this, I again look inside the trunk, and still this time seems like the first time as it takes me back in time, a virtual time machine. I have tried to keep it as it first appeared.

Inside the trunk are two large family Bibles, seven photo albums, two small books, one titled Cogswell Compendium of Phonography and the other, Intermediate Course in Mechanical Drawing, a jewelry box with jewelry inside, three Phillies cigar boxes, two missing their lids, with miscellaneous contents, a Polaroid camera in its case with a boxed flashgun and booklet, many financial records including tax returns, a box of writing paper, a framed photograph of Grandmom, memory books of Grandmom’s and Poppop’s funerals, a Buck knife in its box, three extremely sharp household knives and on the bottom of the trunk like cabinet liner, two newspaper sheets dated March 30, 1945.

As you can imagine, I have spent many hours “inside” this trunk and continue to find out things I did not know every time I open it and take the time to look. Surprisingly, he saved many local newspaper clippings about me, inserted in photo albums, things I had forgotten about. Uncle Johnny could not have imagined the pleasure his gift has given me. I hope he is up there somewhere, looking down and smiling, happy that I am learning more about his life and the kind of person he was. Some of the things I find make me wish I could call him up and ask, “What was that for?” It’s now a life in a trunk, creating some questions with no answers.