The Box

Rick and I are antique junkies.  We are particularly fond of primitives.  Rusty buckets and porcelain signs draw us like bees to honey.  Our house is full of antiques and junk and collectibles with stories that could fill a book.

We are also avid campers and the Ozarks are one of our favorite camping spots.  Over the more than thirty years that we’ve been visiting the Ozarks, we finally built a small one room cabin on our secluded property just outside of Heber Springs.

On one of our many trips to our cabin in the Ozarks, we stopped off at a small junk shop.  The owners were an elderly couple probably in their late seventies.   We just knew them by the name of their shop, Cothren’s Antiques.  Mr. Cothren walked out from one of the several buildings they used to house their treasures. We could hear his voice before we could see him. He had a distinct voice and a personality to go with it.  Mr. Cothren  was about as cute as you could get. He was wearing a pair of worn overalls and a big straw hat.  He had obviously been working on one of his many restoration projects. He pulled his gloves off, wiped his hands on his overalls and stuck out his hand to greet us.

Mrs. Cothren was inside the showroom. She tended to the store and rang up the purchases.   They had a pretty magnificent show room in one of their out buildings. We were quite surprised to see the quality of the antiques they had there.  We stopped a few times and bought some nice pieces from them and even brought some of our friends with us over the years that also purchased some nice pieces from the Cothren’s.

On one of our visits, we had noticed an old primitive box propped up on the outside of the building alongside a pile of chopped wood. We are suckers for boxes.  This was a particularly large wooden box with a strange marking on the side. It was as if someone had tried to carve some kind of design on the side of it.   It was very weathered and we could only guess how old it must be.  It looked like it had been propped up against the building for some time.  Before inquiring about the old gray weathered box, we decided we didn’t have room for it anyway. We were so loaded up with camping gear that we would have had to strap it to the roof of the jeep, so we left without it.

All the way home, we talked about that box.  We speculated on its origin.  We also talked about how we wished we had gone ahead and strapped it to the roof.   And like many of the old things we’ve purchased over the years, we imagined the story that must have gone with that old box.  We were really regretting we didn’t buy it and bring it home.

A few years later on our way home from the Ozarks; we stopped off at the little junk shop.  This time we noticed a sign on the door.  “We’re selling out.”  It appeared as though the Cothren’s had decided to sell off all their antiques and close their little shop.  We went in and scanned the place of any antiques we thought we couldn’t live without.   We made a few purchases and while Mrs. Cothren was checking us out, Mr. Cothren walked in.  He appeared to be pretty excited about something.  He explained to his wife that he was finished with the project that he had been working on and just had to show it to her.  He was so preoccupied with his project and showing it off that he barely made eye contact with us.  He brought it in and sat it down on the floor and began to talk about the many days he had spent on this hopeless piece of junk only to discover it’s real beauty.  He stepped aside to reveal a golden brown and beautifully hand rubbed BOX.  Rick and I both gasped at the same time. “That’s THE box!”

 The old gray and weathered box that we left behind years ago had been sitting and waiting for us all this time. Of course, it had to be ours. Without even knowing what the box was going to cost, we declared it ‘sold!’   We purchased the box and asked if it had a story with it.  “Of course, “ said Mr. Cothren.   This beat up old weathered box had sat out on the front porch of a local grocery store for more than 100 years.  He himself remembered buying potatoes out of the old box.  He pointed out the hole where the mice had made their way in and out of the box over the years.  He didn’t know why the crude carving was on the side of the box. That is still a mystery.  But he had acquired it during one of his many purchases of various items around his neighborhood. He said it sat outside his building for years until recently when he had decided to see what a little paste wax would do.  

The shiny golden brown box now sits in our living room.  Many who come to our house notice its uniqueness and primitive beauty.  And then we tell them the story of ‘the box’ and the little old man who polished it up just for us.