The Box: Part I

I’m not sure whether to call “The Box” a souvenir, a collectible, a keepsake, a treasure, or just simply one of the many pieces of junk or clutter I’ve gathered through the years.  “The Box” is probably about 65-years-old, given to me by our “substitute mailman” (also our landlord and very special family friend) Churchill (yes, that was his first name!).  

I remember (I was only 10 or 11 at the time) the day Churchill was delivering mail, filling in as he often did for our regular mailman Jim, and gave me that plain, unwrapped, unfinished wooden box, telling me it was a “special delivery.”  When I opened the box I found a baby groundhog staring up at me.  It was only a few weeks old.  Apparently Churchill had found it along the road on his mail run that day—and managed to get it in that box he just happened to have with him.  

Everyone in the neighborhood knew of my fascination for wildlife and the menagerie I developed every summer in the back yard and on the back porch—turtles, frogs, snakes, pigeons, chipmunks, and at one point a pet skunk.  From time to time, friends and neighbors would contribute to that menagerie. How my parents put up with this penchant of mine I’ll never know—but they did—and even seemed to encourage it.  Mom didn’t seem to mind my takeover of one of her wash tubs as a habitat for my collection of frogs during the summer months.  My dad even brought home a small blacksnake for me that he had found while at work.   

The baby groundhog didn’t survive in spite of all my best efforts to save it by feeding it warm milk with an eye dropper and getting my mother’s permission to keep it in the house.  The box, however, has survived and I hope to write “the rest of the story” another time.