Here are some pictures of wooden boxes that caught my eye. The first one is of boxes that were put on display in a storefront in San Jose, but I’m not sure why. I think they were simply to fill up space, but they are interesting all the same. Perhaps they are there as historical artefacts.

They might be, but I know some wooden boxes are still in use because the following photo was taken at a recent farmers’ market in Edmonton, and the boxes are very much a part of the ongoing effort to reuse rather than recycle whenever possible.

This brought to mind a packing trunk that I bought on the Uxbridge Road in Hayes, Middlesex in England before I emigrated to Canada in 1975. It was a very big deal at the time; I thought it was both a very big box and very expensive. I used it to have my personal possessions shipped, and it arrived months after I did. By then, I didn’t really need most of its contents.

As you can see, the trunk has been used and abused over the years. I painted the yellow lines on it so as to make it slightly more attractive as a coffee table.  Since then it has been used as a worktop for various activities, including painting. My eldest son also used it as a packing case when he moved out of the family home, and he, too, used it as a coffee table. Ultimately, it just became a place to store unwanted electrical gadgets and clothes hangers, and it now sits in the garage.

When I originally had the trunk shipped, I carefully typed out its contents, and that list from 1975 is still intact inside the lid.

It’s interesting that I chose to ship 45 cassette tapes. That is probably an indication of how much they cost and/or how much the music meant to me. It is also clear that I didn’t know I would not be able to use the electric iron. Most significantly, though, it shows there was once I time when I could fit all my worldly goods into a single box. And, I have proof!