Orange Crates and Other Treasures
Christopher Bogart
A true treasure trove consisted of a broad spectrum of collections,
including things abandoned, things discovered,
and things rescued.
The discriminating collector, the true artiste, as it were,
found intrinsic worth in form as well as function.
Was it shiny, for example? Was it sturdy?
What was its potential as a conserver of treasure?
Shoe boxes were great for stamp collections,
coin collections, vacation photos, postal cards or
a backyard burial for a budgie or a hamster.
Soda bottle caps, filled with melted wax, made for
fast-moving games of street skully.
Tobacco cans, the maroon Prince Albert, were the best,
and kept dyed rabbit’s foots, bottle caps, baby teeth
the fairy forgot to take, and cat’s eyes and aggies safe.
Empty coffee tins with holes punched in their lids
kept grasshoppers, crickets and toads,
while marmalade jars kept butterflies, and ladybugs
and fireflies.
Our project apartments came with appliances,
but when we moved into new development houses,
empty appliance cartons were great for tumbling down hills,
four or five to the carton, for as long as the carton would last.
But the piece de resistance of all empties was the orange crate.
Its thick wooden sides and its long thin wooden slats
provided butt and barrel for a perfect Tommy gun.
And, just for fun, the crate as a whole could be
molded into a go-cart, with a little art, and just the right
pair of metal roller skates, mounted on a four-by-four.
In the years of my youth, I discovered treasures by the score,
but the more I collected, the more I stored; until
in the ripeness of age and acquisition, I found that
there was just no room left to stash them all, besides
they had been joined by more mature collections:
the errant letter from a friend, the college photo,
gold cuff links to a shirt I no longer wore, or had.
It seemed sad. But then again, maybe not so. For I have stashed,
stored them in a place that takes little space,
this treasure trove of memories.
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