It has a history.

Dana lives in the same building, on the same floor as I do, and we’ve had numerous elevator conversations, mostly about the weather, occasionally about spinal stenosis, which we both have. He walks with two canes, usually one in each hand, and never complains. But today he found this steamer trunk sitting out on the sidewalk with some trash, three blocks away. It’s serviceable, a bit battered like Dana and me, but the hinges still work and the clasps are only slightly rusted. He wants it for storage and as a TV stand. 

“How old do you think it is?” he asked me, putting it down and taking a moment to rest and breathe.

“World War 2, maybe? Our age?”

“It has a 28 on the bottom, do you think it could be that old?” He opened it up so I could see the inside. It’s clean, appears to have been well cared-for. Someone has carefully cut out children’s poems from old magazines or books, pasted them neatly inside the top. The graphics are definitely dated. 

“Could be from 1928, sure. Maybe a child’s toy box.” He said he couldn’t make out the words, so I squatted to read him a few of the poems.

“It has a history,” he mused. “Somebody used it for travels maybe, and then used it for a kid who’s maybe dead of old age by now.”

I asked him three times if I could help him carry it home, and he refused. Three times. I know his back was hurting, but he insisted he was fine. It would be easy if we both took a side, I said, but no. He wasn’t having it.

As he started home (Extra), his two canes in his left hand and the trunk in his right, he was beaming.