THE CEDAR CHEST 

I have lived the last 25 years in the hallway of my house,  and am used for storing blankets, so I only get opened when my owners are having extra company. But before that I had a more exciting life.

When I lived with my previous owners had me down in their basement.  That might sound to you like a sort of demotion, but in fact the basement was a sort of refuge for that family, and they came down to visit with me often. Their house was very small, so they needed to store all their extra things down in the basement, which wasn't finished. The walls were rough concrete, and the ceiling had exposed asbestos-lined pipes which carried the hot air from the furnace up to the rooms above. But the best part of the basement was that it was cool in the summer. When temperatures outside often got above a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, the basement was always at least 20 degrees cooler. 

My owner at this previous house was called Ann. She had brought me from her family farm, 15 miles north of Jamestown, North Dakota, when she got married, and had taken me with her wherever she moved. She and her husband Ken lived in Steele, which had a train depot as he worked for the railway.  But shortly after their baby Kathleen was born, Ken tragically died of a infection of the pericardium, the sac that lines the heart.  Ann and Kathleen then moved in with her mother-in-law, in a little town called Hurdsfield, and of course she had me with her there. Ann taught school, and Gramma Hutch, as she was called, looked after Kathleen.

During the depression in the early 30's, Ann found it impossible to get a teaching job but found summer work, which converted into a full time job,  in Jamestown as a nurses' aide at the State Mental Hospital. Ann and I moved into the hospital premises on the outskirts of the town, and Kathleen became a boarder at St John's Academy - the convent school where Ann and her sisters had attended. 

It was while she worked at the State Hospital that Ann met and fell in love with Chet who was an orderly there.  When they married, they moved me with all their other belongings to their new home in Bismarck, where Chet got a job as an orderly at the State Penitentiary. Kathleen was pleased to be able to go to an ordinary school again, and they found a first floor apartment to rent not far from her new school. It was so small they covered me with boxes so no one could see my beautiful sheen.

Later on, when Judy and Jeanie were born, the apartment wasn't big enough, so they rented a house on the edge of town, and I was moved there. And when Jeanie was 6, and had just started school, they moved back into the middle of Bismarck, just 2 houses away from where they had lived in when they had first moved to Bismarck.

So that is the house whose basement I was talking about earlier. It was a small house, built in about 1930 by a local builder, and owned by the people next door called the Boesphlugs - German immigrants. Their son and his family had lived in it when it was first built, but then they moved to another town 100 miles north of Bismarck called Minot, so the Boesphlugs decided to rent it out.

When Jeanie was a little girl, she just loved to go downstairs and look through my contents.  Even just opening the lid was a pleasure, because I am made of cedar, and my sweet smell lasts forever.

I am not very large, perhaps 1 foot wide and 2 feet long, and 2 feet above the ground. I have 4 legs, which are rather shapely, and my lid is hinged so that I can be easily opened.

Inside Ann put things that she wanted to save and yet things that there was no ordinary use for.  Jean liked to take everything out and look through it, and find out its history.  One of her fascinations was for a bra - size 36 C which had been left by Kathleen, when she had moved out to Washington D.C. when she was 18. Jean, aged 9, imagined what it was like to be able to wear (and need to wear a bra) and she often tried it on, in hopes. Also in the chest was a brown and white seersucker bathrobe. That had belonged to Toby, Kathleen's first boyfriend. Kathleen had brought him home to meet Ann and Chet, and he had stayed for a few weeks. But Kathleen was underage and Ann wouldn't give her permission to marry Toby so he left, but his bathrobe stayed behind.

But the things Jean most liked looking at were the baby clothes and the baby books. There were 3 of them - one for Donald John, their brother who had been born first, in 1940, but had lived only 3 weeks.  So his book only had the details of his birth and his weight in it. He was called a blue baby, because one of the valves of his heart  hadn't worked properly.

There was a book for Judy too, born in 1942. She had been born by Caesarean section, after Ann had been a long time in labour without progressing. There were quite a few entries for Judy - her first word, her height and weight for the first few months. 

Then there was also a book for Jean, actually named Barbara Jean but always called Jeanie which seemed to go so well with Judy. There weren't many details of her, except that she weighed 7 lbs 3 ounces at birth.  I guess Ann was too busy with 2 little babies as Judy was only 15 months old when Jeanie was born (and she in her forties by then).

The baby clothes were wrapped in tissue paper. They were hand knit  - little white and pink sweaters, one was a hooded version. Jeanie wondered what it would be like to have a baby so small as to fit into these clothes. 

There were also clothes that Judy and Jeanie had been given, but had outgrown, that Ann hadn't wanted to give or throw away. There were little red capes with matching beanies, knit by their Aunt Ceal (who died childless when she was in her early 30's).

There was also a painter's smock that had belonged to Ceal. She was the sister closest in age to Ann, and they had been good friends. Ceal had come to stay at the house with Ann before she went into the hospital with her cancer and she never came out again.

Jean looked through each item, whenever she opened my lid, and then carefully put them back again, exactly as they were, worried that she would be told off if they got wrinkled or messy.

But after Ann died, Chet stayed in the house for about a year, and then  he sold it (they had only bought it from the Boesphlugs a couple of years before) and he and his new wife lived in her apartment.  Jeanie had married and moved to England by this time, so she couldn't really taje any of the large items of furniture, but Judy and her husband Larry took quite a few pieces, including me.  Larry loves working with wood, and he fully appreciated my value.  He sanded me down, and stained me, and polished me until I looked like new.

And from then on, I was upstairs, in a very prominent place, just under the bulletin board with Judy and Larry's pictures of their children on.  But even though I like my new home, I wish that I still had my old contents - because as useful as blankets are, they aren't nearly as interesting.