Whenever I hear a story about someone who–despite having lived in their house for over 50 years–just recently found Al Capone’s missing loot hidden behind a wall, or one of Shakespeare’s lost plays in the bottom of an armoire, I always think the same thing (and no, it’s not “I hope you choke on it, you lucky stiff”).What I think is “Well, obviously this was a house that had never had any children living in it.”
Not because the children themselves–those “inquisitive little darlings”–would have explored every single corner of the house on their own (that would involve turning off–and then looking away from–the TV), but because the presence of those same children would have automatically guaranteed that the house had been turned upside down and inside out many, many times over the course of those fifty years, as the children (and their parents) went through the motions of a little game that I like to call “gone.” As in “where is your homework/new dress/snorkel/trombone?” “Gone.”
Whoever said that wherever you find children you’ll also find childish things had no idea how true that statement would prove to be; this becomes painfully obvious once you understand that the key word in the above sentence is “you.” As in “you” will find “their” things, because it is certain that “they” won’t. That’s why I’m positive that if someone had been living in a house for fifty years–with children–the house could not possibly contain anyone’s lost treasure. There’s just no way that treasure could have withstood all those searches for missing soccer cleats, saxophone reeds, and iPods (or, as the case would have been fifty years ago: leather football helmets, ukulele strings, and 45 records). The fact of the matter is that in a child-ridden house, Al Capone would not have been able to stash so much as a stick of gum. Hidden behind secret panels, tucked away behind spinning fireplaces–none of it would have mattered, because no matter how well Mr. Capone might have though he had hidden it, nothing would have stood up to a mother trying to find a missing violin in the final 15 minutes before the big recital.
Take our house, for example. I am positive that even though it is over a hundred years old, nothing could have escaped this spring’s biweekly search for Clementine’s baseball shirt. Because she had fifteen games this season (despite my body’s protestations that it was more like 215, the calendar would only admit to those fifteen), we tore the house apart looking for her baseball shirt approximately fifteen times. During the course of these searches we found wet, moldering towels stuffed into sock drawers, broken and poorly hidden family heirlooms, and evidence that the cardinal rule–Thou Shalt Not Bring Food Into the Bedroom–was being flouted regularly. We also, eventually, found the shirt. (And before you say something clever like “why don’t you just have one place where the shirt always goes whenever it’s not being worn, know this: we did, and we do, but there is something so soul-draining about sitting out in the glaring sun, freezing wind, driving snow and pelting rain for two hours to watch a game–this being Flagstaff, this was all in the same game–that by the time we got back to the house it was all we could do to point at the equipment bag and gibber incoherently.) Which meant that, once again, the shirt was on its way for another “tour de house.” And so–in my role as chief searcher–was I.
In fact, I think it’s safe to say that the reason Al Capone’s treasure has stayed hidden all these years is probably because no one ever told their mother that the last time they remember seeing their baseball jersey was “down at that guy Al’s house–I think he was using it to wrap some treasure.”