The Arabia Steamboat Museum, Kansas City, MO

December 2006's Smithsonian Magazine had a great article by Fergus M. Bordewich on the fate of the Arabia Steamboat. A submerged tree sank the Arabia in 1856 while making its journey which began in the Monongahela River in Pennsylvania. Among it's passengers were soldiers to forts in Montana, Mormon settlers on route to Utah, and it's cargo contained thousands of items for barter or sale in the Western frontier. The boat sank in less than ten minutes, but all 130 passengers and the crew survived.

I work in a highrise in lower Manhattan in a building with sweeping views of the waters which surround the tip of the island. The boats I see are the water taxis to New Jersey, the Staten Island Ferry, and occasionally a tug pushing a barge. In Mark Twain's day, the waters would have been bumper to bumper steamboats. They were the SUVs, and the rivers in which they navigated, the I95.

David Hawley and his brother and father searched for the remains of the Arabia deep below the cornfields of Kansas, land which was once river. What they found in the excavation is incredible, a real buried treasure of the historical kind. A time capsule from 1856. A case of brandied cherries, whale-oil lamps, syrup jugs, overcoats and top hats, bottles of wine, "Dr. Hostetter's Stomach Bitters," lice combs, jars of skin cream, flasks of perfume, Parisian buttons, glass beads imported from Italy and Bohemia, clay pipes, and my favorite: a jar of pickles.

I found the pickle part fascinating because, well, I totally love pickles (Hello, Quiznos pickle bar), but also because my Grama Altman was quite a pickler back the day. She had a garden from which she canned and jarred vegetables and fruit with amazing results. When we were selling the old house, we decided to have a kegger to clean the joint and remove it's remaning contents. When we opened up the door to Gram's root cellar (She said "root" like it rhymed with "foot") we found a jar of electric green pickles from the early seventies. My Aunt Betsy said she remembered Gram had put too much food coloring in that season. Our friend Carol grabbed the jar, opened the top, and it went "Pop!" and she ate a pickle without even a second's hesitation. We recoiled in horror. She said it was good.

Naturally, I was curious about the state of a pickle jar 100 years more vintage than the electric green variety, particularly a batch submerged in water and dirt for 20 more than that. Story has it that a fellow excavator of the Hawleys named Jerry Mackey also opened this particular jar just minutes after they had unearthed it, and he passed it around the group. No takers. "Well, I'm starving," said he, as he picked out a pickle and bit off the end --while everyone else held their noses-- "That's one very good pickle." Awww, pickling. You're an awesome process! Provided, of course, you're done correctly and you pop like you're supposed to.

The Hawleys started a museum which contains the remains of the Arabia and it's contents (over 700 objects) aptly named the Arabia Steamboat Museum. The next time (the first time) I'm in Kansas City, I'm paying a visit! Time capsules: Awsesome. Incidentally, there may be a time capsule buried in the backyard of my old house in Swampscott, Massachusetts, folks, containing some crap from 1976. Warning, before you all start booking flights to Boston and start digging, you must know there's the chance it's already been unearthed. By me. I never was one for that patience thing. I seem to remember digging it up in 1977 because I couldn't wait (or I wanted something out of the box), making it significantly less interesting. Ah, well. Me. Sigh.