A Good Box

​One day in the early 1970s, Dad came home with a new appliance. It was heavy, so he had my big brothers Peter and Danny carry it into the house. My siblings and I gathered around to see the new thing. The unit was harvest-gold in color, matched our refrigerator, range, and dishwasher, and was portable. It stood about kitchen counter height with a big drawer that opened from the front. I hoped it was a new dishwasher, but it looked too small to be a dshwasher.
We already had a portable dishwasher—a top-loader that was very awkward for a little kid to load and unload the dishes, especially from the bottom rack. One day, I was balancing myself on my stomach over the edge of the dishwasher, reaching for the clean plates below, with my feet dangling off the floor.
My brother Gerard grabbed my feet and lifted them, acting like he would push me in. Unfortunately, I lost my balance, and Gerard wasn't strong enough to hold me by my ankles. I fell into the dishwasher! Plates hurt when you land on the edges with your head, which scared the daylights out of me! But revenge was sweet.
When it was Gerard's turn to load the dishwasher, I closed the lid on him while he was bent over the machine. Gerad was yelling for me to let him out. "Say, uncle," I demanded. When Gerard finally surrendered and said Uncle, I still didn't let him out. "Now, say Uncle Tom is a nice guy." My brother was still yelling when Mom came into the kitchen.
Although I tried to explain what Gerard had done to me a few days earlier, Mom was disinterested and sided with my brother. "That dishwasher is not a toy," Mom scolded us both. Now you can just take the dishes out and wash them by hand." That was fine with me; I never liked that dishwasher anyway. 
When we wanted to run the dishwasher, we had to roll it over in front of the sink. Kitchen carpets were popular in those days, and the loaded machine was heavy and hard to push across the carpeting. Gerad and I would push the dishwasher together. Next, we had to connect the special hose to the kitchen faucet. The hose contraption was two hoses with one head: the top hose was for clean water going in, and the bottom was the drain hose.
A tab had to be held down while lifting the head up and pressing it onto a special aerator on the faucet. If you didn't have it on securely, water would spray everywhere when the faucet was turned on. I hoped Dad's new appliance was a new dishwasher, but it was too small. "What is it," the kids all wanted to know.
"It's a trash compactor," Dad boasted. "With this, we should be able to get our weekly trash in one load." Dad immediately demonstrated the new unit. "You have to use these special leak-proof bags." The bags were heavy paper and looked like they were wax coated on the inside. After carefully folding the bag's top over the bin's edges, Dad took the garbage can from under the kitchen sink. "Who's supposed to be taking the trash out? This can is overflowing," Dad complained – however, he needed a lot of trash for his demonstration.
We didn't have plastic trash bags, so we used paper sacks from the grocery store, which were not leak-proof. When Dad lifted the liner from the trash can, the bottom of the sack fell out, and garbage spilled onto the carpeted floor. "Dog gone it," Dad complained. "If you kids wouldn't let the trash get so full, the sacks would hold this just fine!"
Dad kept as much trash in the bag as possible by holding the bottom of the sack together. He then placed it in the compactor, pulling out a couple of glass jars. Next, he gathered the debris off the floor, setting any glass to the side, and added it to the trash in the bin, which was about three-quarters full. "I don't see how this is going to hold a week's worth of trash," I said. What's the advantage?"
"Watch this," Dad said. He plugged in the machine, and a light came on. The green light turned off, and a red light came on when I pushed the start button. The compactor hummed at first, then started to growl. I could hear things smashing and crunching inside; it sounded angry. Finally, the gadget hummed again, the red light went out, and the green light reappeared. Dad opened the drawer to show us how all that garbage was reduced to a few inches inside the compactor. "See how much space is saved," Dad said." Just remember, you cannot put glass into the compactor," he cautioned.
Dad went on to give training on properly using the compactor, but by this point, he had lost half the siblings. "This is not a toy; it is a machine that needs to be operated carefully," Dad said. "Used properly, it will last for years to come." But there were some things Dad didn't consider.
When the compactor was full, a yellow light would come on, indicating it was time to change the bag. The problem was that the bag inside the machine was holding several trash cans; it was heavy and difficult to handle, especially for a couple of skinny young boys who struggled to move the portable dishwasher across the carpeted floor. Still, Gerard and I managed to get the liner out of the bin and out the back door.
The two of us slid the heavy "cube" to the garage. Unfortunately, by the time we got to the garbage cans, we wore a hole in the liner and left a trail of garbage and garbage juice on the concrete driveway behind us. After we cleaned up the mess and took the garbage cans to the curb, we returned to the house. Another thing Dad failed to consider was the curiosity of young boys, and I had an idea.
Despite my brother's warnings of trouble to come, I decided to test the compactor. "Sure, it can smash an empty can—big deal—even I can do that," I said. We should see if it can smash a full can." I put a new liner inside the trash compactor, then a can of green peas and a tall can of salmon in the bin. I closed the drawer and pressed the start button.
The machine hummed and then growled. I was really struggling, and I was laughing. "You're not as tough as you think," I taunted the machine. Soon, it started to smell hot, and then I quit running. The lights went out, and the portable dishwasher by the sink quit running. Uh oh. Did I break it?" I was worried.
"You probably just blew a fuse," Gerard said. He was smart about those things and went to the basement to check the fuse box. Soon, the lights came back on, and the dishwasher started running again. The trash compactor hummed; the red light went out, and the green light came back on. I opened the drawer, and we looked inside. Both cans were still standing upright; neither was damaged.
"Those cans are stronger standing upright than they would be laying on their side," Gerard said. I challenged his statement. "Of course they are," he said. "What do you think Dad taught us to cut out the ends and lay the cans on their side to flatten them?" I had to admit, what he said made good sense.
I laid the can of peas and salmon on their side. "As long as we're breaking rules, we might as well break them all," I said. I took a partial jar of mayonnaise from the refrigerator and added it to the concoction.
Gerard quickly clarified, "WE are not breaking the rules; you are!" Even though he distanced himself from my experiment, he offered his expertise, "You need to lay the mayo on its side as well." I did and then pushed the start button.
The machine again growled and struggled a bit, but then we heard the glass jar break, followed by two crunching pops. Soon, the machine hummed, and the green light came back on. We laughed as we opened the drawer, expecting to see an explosion, but it wasn't all that spectacular.
The mayo was pooled with green juice from the mashed peas, and the salmon mainly was juice with just a bit of meat from the can. It was rather disappointing. "You better clean that up," Gerard warned. But I had no intention of cleaning up this mess.
"Why clean up what can be covered up," I said. (If I knew then what I know today, I could have been a successful politician with that kind of logic.) I put a folded paper grocery sack over the gooey mess. "That sack will soak up the juice," I reasoned, closing the drawer. But there were a few things I failed to consider:

1. The experiment was done on trash day. It would be a whole week before the trash compactor was emptied again.
2. The reason for not putting glass into the machine is that it will cut the liner like a razor blade!
3. In the early 70s, very few houses had air-conditioning – including ours.

      
By midweek, the garbage smelled bad; by the weekend, it was very ripe; by trash day, it was putrid! Looking for the source, Dad opened the compactor.
Dad lifted the liner, and juice ran from the obviously cut bottom of the bag (I was wrong about the paper sack absorbing the liquid). The aroma of rotten fish and spoiled mayonnaise permeated the room. "Did someone put a glass jar in the compactor," Dad asked. "Dog gone it, I told you kids, 'No glass in the compactor.' Now, it's probably ruined. If you can't use the compactor correctly, don't use it at all." He was furious, and the investigation began.
"Who did this?" Naturally, no one confessed. "Of course," he ranted, "No one ever did it." Despite several attempts to clean the unit, the smell never did go away, and Mom eventually made him get rid of the stinky, harvest-gold, portable trash compactor.
Before he bought the trash compactor, Dad taught us to save space in the trash can by compacting the trash manually. "Cereal boxes can be opened and flattened," Dad demonstrated. "Then, they will stand up on the side of the bag."  We cut both ends out of tin cans and stomped them flat. Back then, there weren't many plastic bottles; milk and pop came in returnable glass containers, and even Prell Shampoo came in glass bottles. I remember the commercial where they dropped a white pearl into the green shampoo to show their product's thickness; you could watch it sink slowly through the clear glass.
Eventually, Prell and other shampoos switched to hard plastic bottles. Prell changed its commercial to show a bottle of their shampoo falling in the shower and bouncing off the tub floor rather than shattering.
When empty, the plastic Prell bottles went straight into the trash. Everything went into the trash; we didn't have recycling yet. Now, we recycle.  
 
At our house, we recycle what we can. I was accustomed to weekly recycling collection in Iowa, but here in northern Minnesota, they only come once a month, on the first Monday. I'm in charge of recycling at our house and keep up with it quite well. With more limited recycling collection days, I reduce the mass by flattening aluminum and tin cans, cereal, and food boxes. Smaller cardboard boxes are flattened, and bigger boxes are cut into flat pieces and put into a box of boxes, so to speak. I learned this skill from my dad.
Boxes are more challenging for me to get rid of because, like many people, I find myself saying, "That's a good box. I'll have a use for that box one day." Everyone likes boxes and has good use for them.
People trying to ship something or folks who are moving are always looking for good boxes. But. Too many boxes were piling up at our house, so I headed to the basement to reduce the ruble.
"Don't cut up that Target box," my wife hollered from the back bedroom.
"Which Target box," I asked. "There are several down here."
"The bigger Target box," Melissa answered. It's the perfect size to start a box of things to take to the Dilly Dally Shop." Everybody needs a good box. I especially like a themed box to surprise someone with cookies.
For example, Sean was working on my truck, which needed a new bushing. It came in a perfect size box, so I texted Sean, "Save that box for me." I could send the box with cookies to my nephew Alex. (Alex is always working on his hotrod car.) When he got the package, he would look at it and say, "Precision Bearings? I didn't order anything from them."
I ordered replacement parts for a faucet. It arrived in a small box marked Moen Faucets. I can surprise my brother Dan (the plumber) by sending cookies to his house in this box. When he gets it, Dan will ask his wife, "Why are they sending parts to our house instead of the shop?" I love surprises. So does our cat, Edgar Allan.
Over a month ago, I surprised Melissa with a twelve-pack of Corona beer and a lime. Melissa put the beer in the fridge, and Edgar immediately jumped into the empty box. Even cats love boxes. A month later, the Corona box is still on the living room floor as "Edgar's box." He will hide inside.
One day, Melissa was standing in the living room. Edgar pushed his paw through the carrying slot on the side of the box and grabbed her leg. It scared my unsuspecting wife, and she jumped and gave a little scream. Our dog Nova Mae and I laughed pretty hard about that. A few days later, Edgar jetted from the box and attacked an unsuspecting canine on her way to a comfy chair. I laughed alone that time. Boxes have historically been a source of much entertainment.
My daughters loved it when I would bring home a refrigerator box. They would put it in the backyard, cut doors and windows in the side, paint it, and play in the box until the rain melted the cardboard.
One year, our daughter Annie asked for a box for her birthday. She didn't want any 'store-bought' gifts, just a big box from my friend Mike, who had the box store (Mike's TV and Appliances).
Sometimes, I'll use a box for extra trash when cleaning out the basement, working on a house project, or cutting up other boxes for recycling.
This morning, being the first Monday of the month, I rounded up the recycling to take to the curb. I stomped a few cans and flattened several more boxes (saving a couple because they were too cool to throw away). I thought about the trash compactor my dad bought way back when. I've been compacting trash my whole life—first manually, then with the trash compactor, and now back to manually again. I prefer doing it manually.
I never liked that trash compactor, anyway. The only two good things to come from it were an experiment gone wrong and the box it came in.
The box was the perfect size and shape; I might need it someday, so I hid it in the attic of our garage. Several months later, I cut a hole in the top of the box, and one on each side, then spray-painted the box silver. I used black crayons to add some detail, and for Halloween, I went trick-or-treating as a robot. I love boxes.