December 23, 2023. On this day, I found a musket in the back corner of the unfinished basement.
Shocked, I asked my husband, “A gun!? What are we doing with this gun?”
The rusty rifle, covered with dust and cobwebs, reeked of must.
He said, “It’s not real. It’s a prop, a decoration at Ethan Allen Furniture Store.”
This morning of the fifth rainy day in a row, I had decided to clear clutter: papers my two middle-age children wrote in high school, balls our teenage grandkids abandoned years ago, tattered doll clothes. Like that. I made piles for recycling. I threw some things in the trash—used tape, no longer sticky. I moved things to the car to donate to the shack at the local transfer station.
The shack. A gathering place. A tiny blue wooden building, often filled with one person’s trash that becomes another’s treasure. Like a giant garage sale. Donate freely, pay a dollar or so regardless of what you take. Forty-year-old sleeping bags, boogie-boards for snow. Chipped plates. Books. Toys. Jigsaw puzzles. Broken glasses. Furniture.
The weather hung heavy, cheerless outside and my inner mood cheerless too, given the tediousness of decision-making and sorting, and the repetitiveness of, “Hon, should we keep this lobster cooker?” Or, “Do you still want these pictures of people you can’t identify?”
Our conversations droned on: “Yes,” “No.” “It’s no good anymore.” Or, “Donate it to the shack,” the suggestion for the decaying musket.
I said, “Ok. I’ll make a sign. ‘Not a real gun. It’s a prop.’”
I printed the message in red marker on card stock and wrapped it around the butt of the firearm with an elastic. I loaded the long fake musket into the back of my SUV, then drove five minutes to the transfer station. Holding it with two hands, I walked the old piece of “junk” into the shack.
“Where’s the usual stuff?” I asked Pete, the manager there. “It’s almost empty in here. “
“We got cleaned out before Christmas,” he said.
A tall man stepped inside and approached me. He wore a Lewiston-strong sweatshirt, an “I’m from Maine” baseball cap and sunglasses. Neither of us knew the other. We shook hands, and chorused, “Hello. Merry Christmas.”
Then he spotted the gun. Wide-eyed, he wowed, “What is THAT?”
He stretched his arms out toward the musket the way we reach to hold a baby. I pointed to the sign and said, “It’s not real.”
He took this prize from me, cradled it, and gestured with his fingers for me to come closer, then almost whispered, “I want to tell you a tale.”
Animated, he began. “My grandfather had a hunting lodge. High on a brown wooden wall hung the heads of deer, elk, bear, owls, moose. Above them were two muskets just like this. My Uncle Paul, who was a character….”
We both laughed at the start of his story, chuckled together at his word, “character.” The energy of human connection warmed us both. We are neurobiologically wired for this.
“One day Uncle Paul took down the two muskets, drove to Plymouth Plantation, stationed himself outside the gates with the muskets, took a military posture and pretended to guard the plantation. I know where this musket is going. What a perfect gift for the lodge. This finishes my Christmas shopping. I needed to meet you today.”
He waltzed around with his new toy and regaled me with more antics of his “crazy uncle Paul.”
The musket, now his, never found a shelf in the shack. He smiled and said, “Nice to talk with you today. Thank you. You made my day.”
I said, “Thank YOU. You made mine. I needed this lift today.”
And we shook hands again.
True. I needed a boost in vitality, which came through an unexpected connection and two handshakes. Maybe there is no such thing as a total stranger.
When have you had a surprise event that led to a feeling of connection? How did you feel before and after? What, if anything, changed in your belief in “the other?” I’d love to hear from you at sly313@aol.com.
We need more stories like this as a reminder that it is not “us vs. them”; it is we. Happy Holidays to all that we are.