2.26.2015

thursday

30 days, 30 pages with writing on them. That's the deal.


19.

A long time ago, my Uncle Junior sent me a box of everything. It was big enough to hold all the stuff from his basement, plus anything he thought looked like something I might be able to use to make something else. One day, it just landed on the porch. Unannounced.

First, imagine a box big enough to hold an appliance. Then imagine it's full of things like broken jewelry and old pipe-cleaners. Now you're thinking of the kinds of stuff you might find in that box. And a whole lot of it.

But don't forget a pair of rubber bare feet big enough to slip over your shoes, with bright red toenail polish on them. Cracked rubber fingers and a nose to match. And an eerie black-face wig of human hair. These things called up the cellar of the house they came from, and made me a little afraid to dig.

Other finds included a plastic bride and groom (with an extra groom); a small, worn Tarzan costume; one very tiny leather kid glove; old souvenir cactus-seed packets, still rattling; a fake parrot made of feathers (one eye missing); stacks of paper doilies in all sizes, velvet flowers and table favors; everything useful for decorating ladies' hats; half-stitched embroidery kits, careful in their yellow baggies of thread (and still waiting to be resumed); boxes of buttons old enough to have come from underwear and shoes. 

And of course, all the cards ever tucked away for safe keeping.

Story bits.

But wait! Here's something I found just the other day, in a box of those old cards I never fully examined. First, let me lay out some details:

1) The same day one sister married a vaudeville musician, she invited the other sister, who wasn't married, to move in with them.

2) The vaudeville musician was part of a well-known duo. His partner had an unusual name. In that time and place, their names together were as familiar as ketchup and mustard.

3) Both men raised families that were pillars of the community (a few of their grandkids got tangled up down the line, but that's a different story).

4) The sister never did marry. She ended up staying in the spare room forever.

5) Now, just about a hundred real years later, from the bottom of Uncle Junior's box, a valentine. It's addressed to that spinster sister, and on the back, it says, "From Your Little __________." (fill in that unusual name) 

So far, I've turned it over in my hand a hundred times, in my head a thousand more. What kind of pictures might you make if you started connecting the dots from one page in your coloring book to the dots on a different page?

6) Even the most well-rehearsed plot can suddenly thicken.