Searching
for Buried Treasure
Someone asked me not too long ago why I haven't been writing lately.
"What's up with
that?"
The
simple answer is that I don’t always have the time. It's not that
I don't have a lot to write about. In fact, I have a long list of titles, which might sound funny, but
that’s just how I work. I come up with a few key words, and fill in "the
rest of the story."
Sometimes,
it's not a title that inspires me, but something I see around town. That
happened just the other day, as I was driving past the 10-Minute Oil Change Place.
I glanced behind it as I went by, and started thinking back to when it was
known as Vet's Texaco. There were times when I would hang out there as a kid to
watch George, the owner, work on cars, and when I got older, I would bring in my
own car, if it needed something I couldn’t do myself.
But
there was another reason why the Texaco station was one of my favorite spots.
The hill alongside of it was one of the areas in town where people dumped
"non-perishable items," as we would call them today. I'm not sure where
they came from, or how they got there, but every once in a while, something good would be tossed over the hillside, like an old radio with
vacuum tubes, or a rusty baby carriage with a perfect set of wheels, or anything
with an electric motor. The memory of searching the dump for the things we
treasured as kids was so strong, that I turned my car around and pulled into
the parking lot alongside the old station building. Somewhere in the
back of my mind, I had the idea that after all of these years, I might still find
something "good."
I started thinking about
the Philco radio at my grandparent’s house. It was made of wood, stood about
three feet high, and sat between two stuffed chairs in their living room. It
had a small dial in the middle that lit up when the radio was on, and speakers
that would make a boombox proud. In the winter, when I would stay over at their
house, my grandfather would turn off the lights after supper, put a kerosene
heater in the middle of the room, and turn on the radio. While my grandparents
sat in their chairs, I curled up on the floor, propped my head up on pillows,
and waited for our favorite programs to begin. From my vantage point, I could
see the flames inside the heater, and feel the heat coming through the vents,
but what caught my attention most of all was the circle of light that was
projected on the ceiling through the holes in the top of the heater. It radiated
upward, and cast a warm glow over the room, adding to the dreamlike bliss of listening to Abbott and
Costello, The Lone Ranger, and stories from the Inner Sanctum.
When
I pulled into the parking lot, I didn't expect to find anything as good as an old Philco, but I got out of the car and walked over to the edge of the hill anyway.
At first, I thought I might be in the wrong spot, since there was nothing
unusual about it. All I could see were a few fallen trees, clumps of wild
grass, and bushes, but then I spied an old bedspring half-buried in the dirt,
angling out from under the brush. There was hope.
I side-stepped down the hill, and
looked for something a little more interesting, but except for a few chunks of
concrete, and a badly worn tire, all of the good stuff was gone. I searched the
entire hillside, but even though I came away empty-handed, I couldn’t help
thinking that searching for “buried treasure” is a lot like writing. We search through our memories, looking for bits of information and images that can be used to express an idea, or give life to a piece of fiction, and along with rediscovering our past comes the warm glow of finding something good.
I hope that is something you will find too, as you read these stories, and imagine a different world, filled with the buried treasures of life.
Contact Us