Storing the precious
Can you tell what this is?
A walk-in safe. In a used book store!
When I asked the owner about it, she explained the old building the bookstore now inhabited had originally been a bank. When the bank relocated, it had been too expensive to move the safe, so it had just been left behind.
When I asked her what she kept in there she shrugged. An umbrella. For when it rains. Extra paperclips and light bulbs.
If I had a hundred-year-old walk-in safe what would I keep in there?
My Yale edition of the complete Shakespeare plays, perhaps. Or the Bible I got for confirmation (which somehow in my moves over the years has disappeared.) Or the Winnie-the-Pooh I read to my child when she was young. Or DESERT SOLITAIRE by Ed Abbey that launched my love of nature conservancy.
I don’t think it would be paperclips and light bulbs!
When I use a word it means
just what I choose it to mean,
neither more or less.
~Lewis Carroll, author~
My husband works in a building that used to be a courthouse and jail, and for some reason, the jail had a huge, walk-in safe. Like the bookstore’s safe, this safe was too expensive to move. The engineers at work now use the safe as a Faraday cage.