Another Wreck Collection

This moment of nostalgia is brought to you by the simple act of opening a box I’ve had stored in my basement in Brooklyn since 1993. This would be the box containing my collection of seashells that I think I’ve blogged about before. In the on-going purge of the detritus in the basement I’ve finally worked my way forward to the shelves holding stuff of a more recent nature; that is, only 16 years ago as opposed to the heretofore 40-50 years of stuff hoarded away.

The influence of my grandmother’s seashell collection on me was long lasting, if not infinite. When I was growing up I was crazy about my grandmother. My grandfather passed away when I was a single-digit tot so she became this goddess of small-town pleasures to her grandchildren; all 21 of us. I would like to say that I was her favorite but that might not be exactly true since I think she was terrific to the whole crowd. I had the advantage of living in the same town and an easy bike ride to/from her home and until I went off to college I was over there all the time, mowing her lawn and eating her food and, finally after a couple of years of trying, beating her at Scrabble.

Her house and garage were a treasure trove of old stuff. Antique dealers today would have heart attacks. But like most of us nowadays those treasures were unrecognized at the time and when grandma wore out and “something” had to be done; her children took the necessary steps to have her cared for and she faded from cognizance, forever out of the ken of her “favorite” grandchildren.

In a formal, glass-fronted cabinet with, I think, three shelves (maybe two) in her living room my grandmother had a seashell collection that had been in her family for a long time. The shells were precisely numbered on little white squares of paper glued to their bottoms and she kept a small journal that listed corresponding references as to their precise scientific names, along with the more mundane common usages. This collection was out-of-bounds to all small hands and could only be viewed through the glass and I spent a lot of time just staring in there; sort of like an unmoving television sitcom with alien creatures wielding weapons set on stun. Many years passed before I was deemed responsible enough to actually breach the boundaries of this cabinet-of-curiosities and was allowed to actually pick up individual shells; fondle their rough and smooth shapes and marvel at the colors and variety.

These seashells, individually, were the finest specimens and I’m sure their value was, even at the time, immense. And there’s the rub. Even my own mother was unable to tell me what became of this collection. It vanished into thin air like a ghost bicycle and the culprit who made off with it (it had to be a relative) never ‘fessed up. It was quite a tempest-in-a-teapot scandal in my family and my overactive brain still thinks the collection still exists somewhere. Maybe still in the same cabinet with the same little, numbered, white squares of paper attached.