Have you ever been a part of a time capsule?  I have. I have been a part of more than one, or at least contributed to more than one.  I think it is a great idea, and I’ll tell you the story about creating mine.

When my husband and I first got together, after about six months I moved into his house with him.  The house he lived in was one of those wonderful 60’s style ranch houses that California is so well known for.  It had a rock fireplace and a “passion pit” accessed by walking down a couple of steep steps to get into.  It was on the other side of the living room’s rock fireplace; so naturally you could see the fire from both sides.

When he purchased it as his bachelor digs, he hired an interior decorator whose job it was to make this into an ultimate “playboy” pad.  The only problem was after semi-decorating each room, he got as far as putting up the shiny black vinyl wallpaper and black mini-blinds in the bedroom, before he had what we referred to as a “hissy fit” and quit.    This left his bedroom with only a bed and two milk crates as nightstands as the furniture.

We were young, in love and quite frankly it was kind of sexy, when it was not 100º in the summer.  In the summer we got the afternoon sun streaming in making the bedroom temperature so hot you could barely stand to be in it, but we made do until I redid it in various shades of pale beige.

The house itself was great, a view encompassing of all of L.A., the ocean, and even Catalina.  The ranch style house wrapped around the perfect kidney shaped pool and spa.  What more could you ask for a first house?

One day I told my husband I needed to make the house “mine” too.  I had sort of done this in the kitchen, except for “that” drawer.  What was in “that” drawer?  It was a catchall drawer for the personal things left behind by the man who had been leasing the house when my husband bought it, before my husband moved in.  Things like color slides of album covers, bills, some personal  correspondence with his wife and business associates, a strand of fake pearls, and a piece of paper with the lyrics to a song he was writing.  All of it belonged to the one and only rock star, Alice Cooper. 

We also had a collection of his booze bottles and a barbeque that he shot up when he missed his floating target in the pool, but they got discarded long before. 

One of the first decisions I made about redoing our home was to fill in “The Pit”.  Sure, it had loads of memories for us; I am sure I was not the first woman to have felt some passion with him in it, but the steps were so steep and they were difficult for him to maneuver now so I hired someone to put in a floor making it a useable space for us.  Before that happened though, I wanted to create a kind of time capsule to put in there.

I took “the Alice Cooper drawer” from the kitchen and emptied them into a plastic box.   I took the lyrics or poem and felt it was just the perfect, fitting touch.  The opening line read:

“Put your ear to the ground, listen and you’ll hear the sound...”

Then I took a few mementos of “our” times together and slowly dropped them in; a photo of us by the pool, an empty matchbook from a hotel in Switzerland from our honeymoon, and a newspaper from the date.  I also put in a letter:

“May the person who find this box someday know this home has seen much love, and happiness,  it has also seen rock star thrown  parties, family gatherings and has witnessed the changes of the city below in the past twenty some odd years it’s been here.  The time has come and gone for “The Passion Pit” style, but not the memories we leave behind in it. Please enjoy this little time capsule place here with love.  May you have many more years standing guard over the city!"

Then I put the box in and hammered in the first nails to the plywood covering it.  That was in 1984.  Now in 2009, twenty-five years have passed and I know the house has been added on to; rebuilt into two stories.  I wonder if they found it, and what they thought?  Perhaps one day I shall knock on the door of our Blue Jay Way home and ask them.