Thursday, February 12, 2015

A Good Box

My brother and sister and I recently spent two weeks winnowing out our parents' possessions. This process has been sporadic over the five years since our father died and the two years since our mother's death. We have made progress but have much, much more to do.

The "Greatest Generation" left behind lots of stuff. Probably everyone who grew up during the Great Depression saved everything they could. At least it seems that way to us. You can imagine the sorts of things we're sifting through, but I want to tell you about a wonderful remnant of our father's organizational system.

Our father loved a good box. This stretched all the way back to his boyhood, according to stories he told us. Of course, in the 20's and 30's, shipping boxes were wooden crates. My father and his brothers would get boxes/crates from the neighborhood groceries and then use the wood for all sorts of treehouses and carts and scooters and whatever they could imagine. (I think it would be a similar passion to that of folks who make incredible things out of wooden pallets today.) When the family had to move to Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. in the early 30's, my father stockpiled wooden boxes in the back yard of their house. He remembered it as a giant pile of boxes. Alas, when the family moved back south, the boxes remained behind. I think Daddy regretted that the rest of his life!

The boxes that his children remember best still fill part of the garage in our parents' home. These are cigar boxes.

 We have an incredible number of cigar boxes left over.

Daddy had a deal with the snack bar/canteen near the Main Gate of the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, where he worked for 35 years. The proprietor saved the empty cigar boxes and my father would bring home a fresh batch every few weeks.

We always had lots of cigar boxes. Lots. Daddy didn't part with his boxes easily, however. Only a few times in my elementary school career did he actually let me have a box to put in my lift-top desk for my pencils and crayons. I took very good care of those boxes.

The beauty of it all is that Daddy used these boxes to put all kinds of tools, parts, and accessories at his finger tips. He labeled each cigar box according to its contents. It was a brilliantly simple system.

When my sister or I load the washing machine at our parents' home (now hers), we can look up at shelf after shelf of cigar boxes on the wall above, clearly labeled by our father. There must be 75 boxes on those shelves. The labels include random parts for every automobile he every owned, repair kits for household items, glues--just an incredible assortment of necessary items. Boxes also sit on the shelves above my father's workbench. One day recently my brother needed some particular screws for a project at that house. He looked at me and said, "I know where I can find a screw like that." Off to the garage he went. In a few short minutes, he returned, carrying a cigar box neatly labeled "small metric screws". Of course, what he needed lay inside, stored decades ago by Daddy.

As our father grew older, he spent less and less time in his garage workshop. There was quite a stockpile of cigar boxes still unused, which would probably remain unused. I began to lobby for a gift of a few cigar boxes to take back to Chicago each summer. This proved challenging. Finally, when my son and I were preparing to return to Chicago after our visit one summer just a year or two before my father died, I succeeded in 'liberating' a stash of cigar boxes. Daddy told me I could have them, but as my son and I were carrying them from the garage to load into the car, my father jumped up from his chair in the living room, grabbed his walker, and shot out onto the front porch to see how many we were taking away! He hated to see them go. I understood.

I like a good box, too. I especially like a good cigar box. When I lived in Chicago, I found a cigar store that sold wooden cigar boxes for $1 (I think). I occasionally treated myself. I am my father's daughter, without a doubt.

You see, cigar boxes are such a brilliantly useful storage system. I use those really nice wooden boxes to keep some of my embroidery projects tidy. The boxes look quite interesting, stacked on a table. And my on-going project in our basement here in South Bend is to use those cigar boxes that I 'liberated' from my father's stash as a storage system for all those bits and bobs that I need to put where I can find them. I have built three shelves over my craft table, and on these shelves the cigar box organization system is slowly emerging.

 Imagine needing staples for your heavy duty staple gun and being able to find a cigar box labeled "staple gun staples". Or some similar item that you need occasionally but that is awkward to store. My solution? A cigar box.

It's brilliantly simple.


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