Do Not Open Until 2123

In 1998, we planted a big plastic time capsule five feet under the front lawn at the Portsmouth Historical Society. We lowered the thing with ropes into a grave-sized hole for the benefit of reporters. The photo ran on the front page of the newspaper.

We jammed it full of goodies like a piñata and buried it like a lost relative. Then we had a little party and forgot about it. But a time capsule is a strange machine. It stays still as we move forward through time. Hopefully our descendants, a radioactive race of mutants, half-grasshopper and half-cellphone, will dig it up in a century and have another party.

The year 1998 was the 375th anniversary of the founding of Portsmouth. The time capsule is scheduled to be opened on Oct. 17, 2123, when the city is 500 years old. So to honor the arrival of New Hampshire’s first European settlers, we filled a four-foot long 15-inch wide section of green PVC pipe with stuff. There were dignitaries, speeches, some cake, and a woman playing the harp.

Because the Portsmouth Historical Society had no time capsule budget, we had to make do. The piece of pipe came from the Public Works Department. The Water and Sewer people closed one end of the pipe, then threaded the top and created a screw-on cap fitted with a rubber gasket.

As the dedication ceremony loomed, society members screwed on the airtight cap, or tried, but it would not close. Two men from Public Works held the capsule upright against the side of the historic John Paul Jones House. Then two more city workers stepped from a yellow folding chair onto the capsule and began jumping up and down. It still would not shut.

In desperation, workers drilled a tiny hole in the cap to release air, then called in city backhoe No. 59. The backhoe bucket pressed down on the capsule until, with a loud “pop,” the rubber seal locked on. Then society trustee “Jock” Brodie, dressed in his suit and tie, picked up a tube of plastic cement at Peavey’s Hardware and plugged the air hole. Perhaps moisture has leaked into the opening, and the contents of the capsule, even now, are turning to mush. You and I will never know.

Copyright J. Dennis Robinson