Houston, we have a problem

Those are the tales that make history fun. In our case, the project ran smack into the immutable laws of economics and physics. Because the historical society had no time capsule budget, special events coordinator June Rogers had to make do. First she obtained a piece of plastic pipe from the city’s Public Works Department. The Water and Sewer people closed one end of the pipe, then threaded the top and created a screw-on cap fitted with a rubber gasket.

Volunteers collected artifacts that, hopefully, will please Portsmouth citizens in 2123. They include 10 books of local history, letters in acid-free envelopes, written messages from eight religious leaders, postcards, magazines including the 1998 fall football issue of TV guide, VHS tapes, menus, car brochures, lottery tickets, photographs, some pottery and souvenirs, coins and a thing called a CD-rom. A copy of Playboy magazine did not make the cut.

As the dedication ceremony loomed, society members screwed on the airtight cap – or tried – but it would not close. Two men from Public Works held the capsule upright against the side of the historic John Paul Jones House. Then two more city workers stepped from a yellow folding chair onto the capsule and began jumping up and down. It still would not shut. In desperation, workers drilled a tiny hole in the cap to release air, then called in city backhoe No. 59. The backhoe bucket pressed down on the capsule until, with a lout "pop", the rubber seal locked on. Then society trustee "Jock" Brodie, dressed in his suit and tie, picked up a tube of plastic cement at Peavey’s Hardware and filled-in the air hole. Perhaps moisture has leaked into the opening and the contents of the capsule, even now, are turning to mush. You and I will never know.

The end is not near

And so the time machine inches ahead, ticking its way into the future. The global positioning of the burial spot has been registered so it can be located even if Future Portsmouth lies far below the Atlantic Ocean. Worst case, duplicate contents of the capsule will still be available on eBay at a reasonable price. Hopefully the 1758 Georgian mansion will still be standing. Originally it belonged to Sarah Purcell who, legend says, rented a room to John Paul Jones. Hopefully the yellow wooden fence, perhaps the oldest in the city, will still encircle the garden and the little marker next to the flagpole where our time machine travels on.

But such thoughts are best left to fortune tellers. We historians can only look backwards. Thankfully, my memory of those pre-9/11 days are still clear. The October chill was just kicking in. In the days before the capsule was buried, I frequently climbed down into the hole in the ground looking for artifacts. I found chips of discarded pottery, animal bones, the leg of an iron kettle, bits of glass and broken silverware. When the newest trustee of the historic society saw me poking around in the hole like a grave robber, she took a photo, which I now pass on to you. .

Back in 1998 the Red Sox were still losers, President Clinton was still fretting over his Monica Lewinski lies, George Bush was just a harmless governor of Texas, Iraq was a war we had already won, and the biggest financial crisis in American history was something in the past, not looming in the headlines.

The capsule still has 115 years to travel, but what a difference a decade makes. I ended up marrying the woman who took my picture in the hole on the lawn that day. Who could have guessed? And that is why history matters. We measure our brief lives against earth-shattering headlines and small private moments. We look back because we cannot see forward. We do good deeds, have children, and leave time capsules to prove, not just to our descendants, but to ourselves -- that we were really here.

Copyright © 2008 by J. Dennis Robinson. All rights reserved. Robinson is the owner of the popular web site SeacoastNH.com. His latest book is Strawbery Banke: A Seacoast Museum 400 Years in the Making.

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