The Big Reveal

What had I put into that time capsule 50 years ago? My whole family was on the edge of their seats

- MIKE FREZON

I swept a layer of dust from the top of the old wood crate I’d lugged from the back of the garage to the living room. It was a time capsule I’d made 50 years ago, filling it with things I’d prized as a 13-year-old in 1972. In the decades since, people I’d mentioned it to would ask, “What’s inside?” At this point, I didn’t remember. But I was about to find out!

I wedged a pry bar into a gap at the top of the crate. My family was gathered around me—my wife, Peg; my 92-year-old mom; my son; my daughter and son-in-law; and my two granddaughters—literally on the edge of their seats to witness the big reveal. Expectations were sky-high. Especially mine. I’d always been into history and how the past connected to current events. The years of my boyhood—the sixties—had been a defining era. I had so many memories. The moon landing in 1969. My beloved Red Sox playing in the 1967 World Series. Even a fuzzy recollection of President Kennedy’s assassination, when I was only four. No surprise that I’d grown up to be a news broadcaster. These items I’d saved…I imagined they’d shed some light on the man I had become. I felt a bit like an archaeologist about to sift through a dig.

“Maybe there’s a copy of the Declaration of Independence,” my son suggested, interrupting my reverie.

“Or a tin with a hidden million dollars,” came another guess.