OLD TREASURES (Patricia Potter)

Just found some money. Don’t know how much. Don’t even know if it’s any good. The twelve bills might not total as much as $5.

But they are worth far more to me.

A year ago, my cousin sent me about several large file cabinets crammed with her father’s papers, along with a number of cardboard boxes full of the same. He’d died a number of years ago and her mother had just died. Bunny and her brother were clearing out her house and didn’t know what to do with file cabinets full of his papers.

She called me. If I didn’t want them, well then they would probably go straight to the dumpster.

I jumped at the chance and for several weeks boxes showed up at my door, then finally a moving truck with the cabinets.

Treasures. They were all full of treasures. Unimaginable treasures and I’m only through about one-fifth of the bounty.

My uncle was my hero, the reason I went into journalism. He was chief Washington correspondent for the Baltimore Sun during the 50's and 60's and was a personal friend of Lyndon Johnson and arch enemy of Richard Nixon (When Nixon lost the presidency the first time, he blamed it on three reporters, one of which was Phil Potter). He was offered the press secretary’s job for Lyndon Johnson but turned it down. He was a reporter first and foremost.

He was one of the first newspaper reporters to go after UnAmerican Activities Committee in the 50's and was friend to all the notable journalists of the time. There are notes all of them in the boxes.

He apparently never threw anything away. Not an invitation to speak, or a thank you, or any article where his name was mentioned. Interspersed in all this are priceless pieces of family history. There is a letter, for instance, from a distant relative, a woman doctor who wrote from the Alaskan Gold Rush. A future book is there.

There is a photo of him on the Battleship Missouri when the Japanese signed the peace treaty that ended the Second World War. I suspect I’ll find something about the time he was wounded in Korea.

I haven’t had the time yet to fully explore modern history through his eyes, but I steal a moment now and then to grab a new folder and lose myself in a life I always envied. I did that this morning. I found a small leather card folder that he used on several trips to China with Richard Nixon. Most of the cards are in Chinese, but others are from hotels and the embassy there. Tucked among these cards were twelve crisp bills of Chinese currency. Each one was different but they were all fifty years old or more.

I had revisions to do, but that curiosity of mine kicked into high gear.
I made tracks to my local bank branch. I had bought British pounds from them before and thought maybe its international department downtown could help me.

The young man at the desk was bemused. And bewildered. He had no idea of what to do with the bills. Not knowing the amount, he couldn’t give me a receipt and thus couldn’t send it to the main branch. I would have to go in person.

But the day was ending and I had no time. Now I have to wait until Monday to discover what great riches await me. I think it’s that $5. The bank officer bet me it would be less.

But that doesn’t matter, I explained. It’s the mystery of the find.

How many attics are filled with such priceless tidbits of history? How much is destroyed because no one has time today to preserve them?

As for me, I can’t wait to discover what else I’ll find next week.

I’ll keep you posted.