Edited by Jim McCrory, Thursday, 13 June 2024, 18:36
As an eleven-year-old, I lived in Glasgow, where many of the old tenement buildings were subject to the wrecking ball. This meant rich pickings for my friends and I. We would enter the buildings and dismantle the copper and lead piping and take it to the scrap merchant who would give us a handful of silver coins.
One day, we were excavating a wall in search of block tin (A metal that fetched a high price). When we made some progress at chipping away the plaster, to our surprise, in the cavity was a ceramic vessel with a crack on it. Inside was with a note written on brown paper in pencil. It read,
“Today, on this July day of 1871, I sat here with my sweetheart eating pickles, cheddar, and bread as we spoke of our future union
George Craven the bricklayer.”
As kids we threw the note away and never gave it a second thought, at least until now. I often think about such notes left for future generations to find and hope they enjoyed a long and happy marriage.
I never found out George’s sweetheart’s name. I assume George was working on the building project and she came along with his lunch all the years ago. Perhaps the vessel in the wall was used for his water or milk. Since it was cracked, perhaps he had the idea to leave the note.
That Message in the Bottle
As an eleven-year-old, I lived in Glasgow, where many of the old tenement buildings were subject to the wrecking ball. This meant rich pickings for my friends and I. We would enter the buildings and dismantle the copper and lead piping and take it to the scrap merchant who would give us a handful of silver coins.
One day, we were excavating a wall in search of block tin (A metal that fetched a high price). When we made some progress at chipping away the plaster, to our surprise, in the cavity was a ceramic vessel with a crack on it. Inside was with a note written on brown paper in pencil. It read,
“Today, on this July day of 1871, I sat here with my sweetheart eating pickles, cheddar, and bread as we spoke of our future union
George Craven the bricklayer.”
As kids we threw the note away and never gave it a second thought, at least until now. I often think about such notes left for future generations to find and hope they enjoyed a long and happy marriage.
I never found out George’s sweetheart’s name. I assume George was working on the building project and she came along with his lunch all the years ago. Perhaps the vessel in the wall was used for his water or milk. Since it was cracked, perhaps he had the idea to leave the note.
Image by mage by Henk Hommes (Unsplash)
https://unsplash.com/@jayneharr33