The story of my great great grandfather’s friend John can be told by the items in that little brown box. When he was born they did not have the luxury of current medical technology and he was born in small colonial looking house in what is now the southern part of the United States. The family he grew up in was predominantly poor and had to use a flowery looking homemade tablecloth to wrap the baby up to keep it warm during the frigid nights. That was the best they could do for the newborn baby. The family used a traditional baby meal of chestnuts and water to make a milky type of formula to feed the newborn baby and kept it in a small pottery jar with a cork on top to keep it moist and safe from disease. This all went well for the family until severe flooding threatened to take away everything from the family.
The family chose to sell off all of their belongings in order to buy a canoe made of bark from the local Native Americans. They bought this canoe so they could take the river downstream to dryer grounds to provide a stable place to build a family. The father of the family, Mark, was a potter by profession but he also made statues to help support the family in times of need. He had seen pictures of Africa and African folk art and even met an authentic African drummer when he came to their old village. He decided to base some of his statues off that drummer and the images he had seen of that beautiful artwork. He knew the people near what is now Mexico would buy this artwork at top dollar and he would be able to finally comfortably support his family.
While his father was working, the new baby born boy named John was growing older and becoming self sufficient. John learned how to fish on the river at a very early age and was a very good fisherman but had a problem with bringing home small fish that could barely support one meal. To solve this problem Mark gave his son John a ruler and a clay plate that he had made at work. He told little John that he needed to have a fish as long as the ruler or as big as the plate for him to take the fish home. John listened to his father and was soon bringing home so many fish that they had to take them to the market to sell the fish so they did not go bad. Since John caught the fish, John had to sell the fish. He took his Father’s genuine African leather wallet with him down to the market so he had a place to keep any gold or coins that he would get for his freshly caught fish.
John had never gone down to the market by himself before and did not know the value of things that people would sell or trade for different items. Since he was naïve and young, a man came up and offered to trade his jade totem from china for his fish. John knew that jade was expensive and gladly took the trade. When John took the totem home to proudly show his father, his father became very angry at John. “That totem is worthless you fool!”, John’s father screamed. The totem turned out not to be jade and was in fact, worthless to the family, but it was very precious to the Native family it was stolen from. The Native family sought revenge on Mark’s family and beheaded little Johnny for theft, as was tradition in their small tribe. They then shrunk the head and kept it as a token of victory.
The box and all of its contents came from southern United States and tells a sad story of a family trying to make it in a hard world and how a harmless mistake can end the life of a young man. This box has been near and dear to my family every since that fateful day and every item in the box has become priceless heirlooms.
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