Looking under chair cushions is a favorite pastime of our youngest. Especially, where Daddy sits. With enough frequency to be encouraging, he finds a coin or two that has wiggled out of some unsuspecting pocket. His prize find is a quarter dated 1969, the year of his birth. To him, that piece of silver is both ancient and lucky. For in his limited thinking, nothing of any consequence happened before he came. And surely anything so personal, so much a part of him as the birth year has to bring luck.
In the years that I’ve been keeping house, looking under chair cushions is just part of spring ( summer, fall or winter - check one) cleaning. Dust has a magnetic way of sliding into those out of sight places, too. It’s also a good place to look for lost scissors, pencils, and small toys. But, always tucked under the cushions is a bit of the past - like an old letter - that slipped away when one was distracted by a telephone or a scraped knee.
Last week, I receive a phone call from family in Texas. In the course of the conversation, it was mentioned that a friend of one family member had lost her purse at Six Flags over Texas ten years ago. Recently, repairs to one of the rides turned up that purse…under the seat cushions. It seems that the local Texas paper carried a human interest story on the incident.
Much to my surprise, I opened The Savannah Morning News the very next morning to the same story, front page. Other than the human interest of finding an item, lost for ten years, the wire services must have picked up the story because of the contents of the purse. It’s not that they were that unusual, but rather that a ten-year lapse of time reveals much about our always changing standard of living.
Still in the purse was a matchbook with the Humble Oil slogan, “Put a Tiger in Your Tank;” a beer can opener, a 15-cent tin of aspirin, a checkbook with stubs showing checks written for $1, $2.34 an $3.50; an address book; “white-look” lipstick, and a camera.
At the time of the loss, the owner was 19, unmarried and working as a grocery store cashier. Ten years later, the now-married school teacher was located through her mother.
In talking with reporters, she said that she had forgotten most of the names in the address book and that she couldn’t remember the last time she used a can opener on today’s pop-top drink cans.
She also remarked that she was making $25 a week and she guess that was the reason she could afford to write such big checks. The 15-cent size aspirin tin now sells for 52 cents.
And the camera which was the latest 1966 model, is heavy and cumbersome by today’s standards. It contained exposed, undeveloped film, but the owner decided not to have it developed. She commented, “Some things are best left in the past.”
1976
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