Letter From Home 8/27/2010

I love old things that speak of another era but also have a practical use today.  My love of history and my curiosity about who else owned and used old items never cease to amuse me.   The look of old trunks has always caught my eye, and my imagination leads me to believe they all must have been used for some adventuresome voyage.  From the westerns where the trunks were strapped to the top of the stage-coach, to the immigrants who traveled to our shores with few belongings, the trunks carry an epic type image with them.  So for the third time in about two years, James and I stumbled upon such a treasure and bought another old trunk.

The first two we purchased sit in our entryway and hold our shoes that are not in season and worn day-to-day.  They match the historic nature of everything else.   One of them needed a little restoration, and so we painted it a nice blue color.   We thought the trunks matched the feel of the ships and ocean in the picture we had hung, and they also served a purpose.  Looking at the shoes was not what we wanted people to see when they came to our home.

Today when we spotted the curved top steamer trunk my heart thumped.  In the time that we were looking at it, and considering if we should make the purchase, another man came up and wanted to lift the lid and look inside.  It was then I had to blurt out, “Don’t touch, that one is sold!”  It was at that point we decided the trunk was coming home with us.  The pressed metal is detailed on the top and sides and is quite remarkable.

It’s my understanding that the curved top ones were more desirable, way back in the days when they were used on journeys because they always ended up at the top of the stacks in ship’s holds.  Others that were flat, like the one at the bottom of the picture in our entry, might have been stacked at the bottom of the pile, and I suspect more likely to be damaged as a result.   The curved type was only able to be placed on the top of a pile.

Inside are the old wooden trays and closures that was another reason for the thumping of my heart.

After it was all cleaned up James placed table linens and accent pieces into the trunk.  When a friend stopped by this evening I told her that the stagecoach leaves at ten, and the trunk is ready!

I will think often, probably late at night when it is really quiet, who put their dress or pants into the trunk.  Were they headed for a new start, or a dreaded trip that they wished would never need to start?  Was there an ocean to cross or maybe just the state of Texas?  The biggest question is how did a family let go of such a memory as this trunk?

New memories now are housed in the trunk, and in a few days, a copy of this post will be added so that no one will ever again not have some sense of the history of the trunk.