Cardboard Box
My first memory of a cardboard box goes back to when I could sit in one. I remember climbing in and sitting with my feet straight out in front of me, my arms resting on the sides, my back snug up against the inside of the box. I fit perfectly. The box could make a little boat, but I couldn’t both push it across the rug and be in it. Too bad. I was stranded in the hall of the Old House, and no one was looking at me.
They were making a phone call. My Aunt Jane held the stick part of the telephone to her mouth and the round part to her ear. My mother and Aunt Margaret stood behind her. Jane said to the operator “Thomas Lee. Manila. In the Philippines.” I knew all that— they were calling my Uncle Tom, their brother. I had never seen him; he was around the world on an island. They heard him. “Oh, Tommy,” Jane said. They took turns listening to him talk, and then their three minutes were up. They looked at me in my box. They had been laughing, but now they were all crying.
Crayon Box
First there were only eight, big and chunky. Mrs. Penman said we could break them in half, but I didn’t want to. Red yellow blue green purple black white brown.
Later, sixteen. I had learned to call “squirrel brown,” Burnt Sienna. There was also Prussian Blue.
Last there were so many that they lined up in a long box. Burnt umber silver gold bronze magenta.
Shoe Box
When my friend June went into the convent after our high school graduation, she was allowed to bring from home only what she could fit in a shoe box. I have spent the last fifty years imagining what she put in that box.
Jack-in-the-box
“All around the cobbler’s bench/ The monkey chased the weasel / The monkey thought ‘twas all in fun/ POP! goes the weasel.” Grinning clowns on every side of the box — bad clowns, those fearful, loud, startling, not-funny impersonators. Wait/wait for a scary surprise!
I learned later that the song had to do with pawnshops, that the cobbler was so poor that he had to pop the weasel, which meant to pawn part of his equipment, but I still see a mad chase around his bench, a much better story.
Lunch Box
My third grade lunch box was pale green with a little rust on the edges. It smelled all right going, but terrible coming back home —old apples, sour milk, bitter edges of crusts with peanut butter.
Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, chicken and rice soup in my thermos. When we had no peanut butter, maybe a brown sugar sandwich on buttered white bread. Baloney on buttered white bread, potato chips in a wax paper bag, an apple I’d carry right back home. Oreos in a wax paper bag. Tomato soup in my thermos. A Velveeta cheese sandwich on buttered white bread. I liked looking at the layers in that one — white bread/yellow butter/orange cheese/white bread.
One day on the walk to school, I dropped my lunch box. When I took my thermos up to Mrs. Millay so she could hear how it sounded all glittery inside, she said, “I don’t think you should eat that soup, do you?” That made me wonder whether even the very best grownups, like Mrs. Millay, had any sense at all.
Cracker Jack Box
Cracker Jack—was that the name of the blurry little sailor dressed in red, white and blue on the waxed paper cover of the box? Inside, the popped corn was stale, the vague molasses coating never sweet enough. And the peanuts were too few and bitter besides—but maybe the prize would be good. An inch long rubber baby, pink or brown, would be very good. Usually, though, it was an inch long plastic magnifying glass.
Another Kind of Box Altogether
“Do you think you can just put me back in the box now?” I asked her. “Just how small will I have to get?”
Fuse Box
Once when my dryer died, I called County Wide Appliance. “Help,” I said. The repairman came to the house, went to the fuse box and tightened a fuse. He said, “Probably all the cars going by loosened it up.” He charged me seventy dollars. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.
Juice Box
I am too old. I have never bought, stored, nor sipped from a juice box. But I do like the very sound of it. Juice box.
Juice box. Juice box.
