By Mike Pound
Globe Staff Writer
—
When I first read the story in this paper about the 17th-century ship found buried in New York City, I was puzzled.
How does an entire ship get buried? Did someone bury it on purpose? Or did it just sit around minding its own business for so long that people, after a while, forgot about it and sort of buried it gradually?
You know, say, in 1822 somebody had a sack of trash that they didn’t know where to put.
“Hey, why don’t you set it over by that old ship,” someone else would say, and before long the whole ship was buried.
But still, to me, that sounded sort of far-fetched. I’m sure by 1869, at least, someone would have said, “Hey, is that an old ship under all that junk?”
But then I thought about my backyard and suddenly the idea that an entire ship could just sort of get buried over time made some sense.
My backyard tends to get a bit gets cluttered.
Well, that’s not exactly true. Arrowhead Stadium after a Kansas City Chiefs game “tends to get a bit cluttered.” My backyard gets really cluttered.
On any given day, a causal walk through my backyard would turn up 28 dog toys, three shovels, five rakes, at least two garden hoses, 12 large cans containing items of unknown origin, 274 mole holes, 158 swimming pool tools and toys, and a 17th-century ship.
Ha, I joke about the 17th-century ship. What I have in our yard is an entire Amtrak train.
Ha, again I joke.
I don’t know how my backyard gets cluttered. It just does. I can spend an entire Saturday decluttering my backyard and then walk out Monday to let our German shepherd Shilo out and trip over two croquet mallets.
“*^%#, where did those come from?” I will say.
“Don’t look at me,” Shilo will think. “I don’t have thumbs. That’s why, when I play golf, I hook every shot.”
Shilo is a bit bitter about the whole not-having-thumbs deal.
Normally, what I do when my yard gets cluttered is take the offending clutter and shove it into the shed in our backyard. But lately that has become problematic for a couple of reasons.
Reason No. 1: The shed is way full.
And,
Reason No. B: The door to the shed fell off years ago and I have to shove it into the door frame and hope it stays in place. Therefore, I’m reluctant to pull the door back out of the door frame.
One time, many years ago, in a rare burst of energy, I pulled the door out of the door frame and cleaned out the shed. I pulled everything out of the shed and set it all in the backyard, fully intending to then take the shed debris to the landfill.
Funny thing. I also fully intended to read “War and Peace.”
So, after a few years, I eventually put the stuff in my backyard back into the shed.
Years ago we bought our now 12-year-old daughter, Emma, a playhouse. A playhouse that Emma and my wife spent weeks painting and decorating so Emma could spend hours and hours relaxing in her little hideaway. The only problem is, in all the years Emma has had the playhouse, she has spent exactly 15 minutes relaxing in her little hideaway. Something that this summer gave me an idea.
Me: I think I’ll start storing stuff in Emma’s old playhouse.
Wife: No.
Me: Why not? She never uses it.
Wife: It’s her playhouse.
Me: But she never uses it.
Wife: She might.
Me: Rush Limbaugh MIGHT say something nice about Obama.
So here’s what’s going to happen. Sometime in the future, say in 300 years, someone will be digging in what used to be the community of Carthage and will make a curious discovery.
An unused playhouse surrounded by a large pile of what will appear to be centuries-old junk.
