‘It is a complex geographical quirk that drives a number of the nation’s time capsules to ‘Time Field’ in Nebraska. Experts have explained it in terms that the layman cannot understand. ‘Tectonic currents.’ ‘Rolling sandstone decay.’ ‘Cataclysmic fracking vacuums.’ These are phrases that they use in their explanations. They mean so much that they hardly mean anything at all.
‘Time Field’ was established as a local phenomenon in the eighties. Old stuff just showed up there, dirty but in good condition. People exhibited a surprising amount of disinterest. Some even reacted with annoyance, as though antique stores had conspired to intermittently dump unsold goods in this one spot.
Before the internet- before the number of people talking about a thing could reach critical mass in seconds- we just took this sort of thing for granted. Things happened, sometimes. Strange things. This was one of them.
In 2003, for the complicated reasons hinted at above, ‘Time Field’ burst like a plump zit, releasing a cache of time capsules that had been building below the surface of the earth for some time. It drains to this day, visitors picking at the surface like a self-conscious teenager with dirty nails.’
Descriptions of ‘Time Field’ are rife with gross, bodily metaphors. Shrapnel being expelled through long-healed flesh. Teeth working their way out of a baby’s skull. The capsules are the foreign bodies and ‘Time Field’ is, somehow, the path of least resistance in regard to the Earth expelling them.
The place is a dump. The eggshell detritus of cracked time capsules lends a jaggedness to the ground. Paper and cloth mix to a pulp, wet with a recent rain. Hector sniffs for anything edible, occasionally stopping to dig up the wrapper of some long-defunct candy line. A man on the other end of the field side-eyes me as I stoop to grab a quarter, wondering if I’ve found something he missed, I imagine, or warning me away from his spot ahead. The quarter was minted last year- probably fell out of somebody’s pocket.
I don’t have the patience to dig.
Instead, and as is increasingly the tradition, Hector and I scout out a place to sit and eat and reflect upon ‘Time Field’ in case it has a message for me- some clue as to whether this is worth it or when it might conclude. Hector pulls the ring off a dead woman’s hand about 15 minutes later. Costume jewelry from a casket carried on the same dark tide that brings everything else here. I throw it back when Hector isn’t looking.
Ashes. Bones. I’d like to find a way to escape, myself, but, given enough time, just about anything will end up back on the Wayside.
-traveler
