The pine trunk with its black latches and trim, its scratched and time-worn wood, and its reinforced siding symbolizes for me, as such chests do for many others, adventure and mystery.
Pull it away from the wall, flip up the latches, open the lid, and you discover a store of past treasures: bundles of letters, a wooden box stuffed with silver eating utensils, various framed pictures and sketches, some loose photos, a few vinyl records voiceless for lack of a machine, an army canteen, my wife’s calendars with various short journal entries recording our days, a battered kerosene lamp, two yellow-and-black armbands reading “Deutsche Wehrmacht” brought home from Europe by my father after World War II, a statue of Jesus holding a lamb, and assorted odds and ends. From this utterly disorganized congregation of objects a patient historian might put together a partial recreation of a family.
Pull it away from the wall, flip up the latches, open the lid, and you discover a store of past treasures: bundles of letters, a wooden box stuffed with silver eating utensils, various framed pictures and sketches, some loose photos, a few vinyl records voiceless for lack of a machine, an army canteen, my wife’s calendars with various short journal entries recording our days, a battered kerosene lamp, two yellow-and-black armbands reading “Deutsche Wehrmacht” brought home from Europe by my father after World War II, a statue of Jesus holding a lamb, and assorted odds and ends. From this utterly disorganized congregation of objects a patient historian might put together a partial recreation of a family.
Sadly, I am not that historian. I only open the pinewood trunk every three or four years. A green notecard atop the trunk identifies its contents, and unless I am looking for some item from that list, which is rare, the trunk remains closed, serving as an end table for books, a repository of valued but unexamined objects. A stranger, or perhaps one of my children, might take more interest in that trunk than I have in my eight years in this apartment.
Please do not misunderstand me: the objects are important. And when I do open one of the three trunks I own, I am like a child in an attic, full of wonder and excitement at what mysteries await me. The armbands I examined intently as a child; the drawing of a flower by my brother; the calendars kept by my wife summarizing daily events from that time when my children were toddlers; the silver used so very rarely at a family meal: these entrance me, yes, but when bound up in the trunk they simply don’t occur to me as worthy of examination.
In addition to the mystery of their contents, trunks also bring thoughts of adventure and travel. Here in the mountains, in the old days, the swankier hotels offered wide hallways so that guests could store their trunks outside their rooms. To escape the heat and malaria of the Lowlands and the Deep South, residents of Birmingham, Atlanta, Charleston, and other cities used to pour into the mountains in which I now live, staying for much of the summer. A suitcase or two being insufficient for their long-term stay, these visitors had their trunks brought with them on the railways. Arriving at the station, they would be met by carriages and drays, and hauled to their hotels. Similarly, travelers to Europe in those days boarded their ships with their wardrobes, books, and other possessons packed into their trunks.
Nearly as old as civilization itself, men and women have used trunks for storage and travel. My pinewood trunk is a storage trunk, too weighty, too bulky, to service the traveler, but in the storage space above my car bay is a traveling trunk, smaller, lighter, made of thin metal rather than wood. Were I living a hundred years ago, and bound for Paris or a winter in Key West, that trunk or perhaps one made of leather, like the one used by Theodore Roosevelt to travel to and from his Western ranch, would have carried my wardrobe and personal belongings.
Soon I will be traveling with all three of my trunks. I am leaving Asheville and my apartment on Cumberland Avenue, which I have loved, and will land in Virginia. Having sold off or given away several hundred books, and having left behind a few articles of furniture either unwanted or too much a bother for moving, I will be departing with fewer possessions than when I arrived here eight years ago. Weeding out stacks of papers, most of them related to my years of teaching, culling the books, and ticking off the extraneous furniture has given both pain and pleasure, but for the most part the sense of traveling a little lighter brings a certain relief, an escape from some things that would have become burdens rather than delights. Those books I could find in any decent public library, those stacks of notes on literature and history, that green sofa in the living room: a certain lightness of being has entered me as I have shed these belongings.
As for the trunks, they will travel with me, still filled with mysteries, still symbols of travel and adventure, reminders of my past, yes, but also promises for the future.
Please do not misunderstand me: the objects are important. And when I do open one of the three trunks I own, I am like a child in an attic, full of wonder and excitement at what mysteries await me. The armbands I examined intently as a child; the drawing of a flower by my brother; the calendars kept by my wife summarizing daily events from that time when my children were toddlers; the silver used so very rarely at a family meal: these entrance me, yes, but when bound up in the trunk they simply don’t occur to me as worthy of examination.
In addition to the mystery of their contents, trunks also bring thoughts of adventure and travel. Here in the mountains, in the old days, the swankier hotels offered wide hallways so that guests could store their trunks outside their rooms. To escape the heat and malaria of the Lowlands and the Deep South, residents of Birmingham, Atlanta, Charleston, and other cities used to pour into the mountains in which I now live, staying for much of the summer. A suitcase or two being insufficient for their long-term stay, these visitors had their trunks brought with them on the railways. Arriving at the station, they would be met by carriages and drays, and hauled to their hotels. Similarly, travelers to Europe in those days boarded their ships with their wardrobes, books, and other possessons packed into their trunks.
Nearly as old as civilization itself, men and women have used trunks for storage and travel. My pinewood trunk is a storage trunk, too weighty, too bulky, to service the traveler, but in the storage space above my car bay is a traveling trunk, smaller, lighter, made of thin metal rather than wood. Were I living a hundred years ago, and bound for Paris or a winter in Key West, that trunk or perhaps one made of leather, like the one used by Theodore Roosevelt to travel to and from his Western ranch, would have carried my wardrobe and personal belongings.
Soon I will be traveling with all three of my trunks. I am leaving Asheville and my apartment on Cumberland Avenue, which I have loved, and will land in Virginia. Having sold off or given away several hundred books, and having left behind a few articles of furniture either unwanted or too much a bother for moving, I will be departing with fewer possessions than when I arrived here eight years ago. Weeding out stacks of papers, most of them related to my years of teaching, culling the books, and ticking off the extraneous furniture has given both pain and pleasure, but for the most part the sense of traveling a little lighter brings a certain relief, an escape from some things that would have become burdens rather than delights. Those books I could find in any decent public library, those stacks of notes on literature and history, that green sofa in the living room: a certain lightness of being has entered me as I have shed these belongings.
As for the trunks, they will travel with me, still filled with mysteries, still symbols of travel and adventure, reminders of my past, yes, but also promises for the future.
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