Now and then I am invited to speak
to school students; most often of Elementary school age. I sometimes recall one
such occasion after I had been aptly warned by the teacher that her class of 6th
graders were a difficult lot; in fact a class well known for their open
challenge of such concepts as “good order and discipline”. A “rowdy bunch,” to
repeat her rather fond – but accurate -- description. Because of my style as a
“story-teller” rather than “instructor” I managed to establish a friendly
enough introduction to my chosen subject: Learning
to love the search for knowledge. I am a lifelong believer in the art of
“show-and-tell”, so I often carry to class a small innocent-looking brown paper
sack which remains closed but always in view. The first object I withdrew and
passed through the waiting hands was a musket ball from Gettysburg, and with it
I shared several little-known Civil War stories.
Later after telling them about the
creation of our solar system and why the surface of the moon presents such a cratered
landscape when we study it, I lifted from the paper bag a tiny dark and
shattered bit of stone from my collection of meteorites; that one picked from a
strewnfield in Indonesia left behind by a 1969 collision of a meteor with
earth’s atmosphere.
With my class visit over, and the
kids heading to lunch break, I was surprised to note the large number of
students (including the noisiest boys) seemed in no hurry to escape as we
walked down the school hallway.
“Mr. Cooper, could I hold that
meteorite one more time”? And then the whole group pulled to one side with
their hands held out and the sense of
wonder aglow on their faces. I knew
without being told by my teacher/friend that a whole lot more had been shared
in that unexpected hour than a bit of pedagogic drama; some hearts and minds
had been touched, and hopefully a change in attitude and viewpoint.
Once I asked a group of adults if
they had ever come into contact with star
dust. Then I passed around a tiny sample in a see-through test-tube of
glittering fine sand. I felt a little guilty as they carefully, almost reverently
handled the screened material I had taken from my own backyard soil hours
before in order to make of a huge truth an understandable analogy. Eons before,
I explained, a giant astronomical explosion had occurred; a supernova of
galactic proportions, and how, obedient to the laws of the economy of matter by
which new “worlds” are made, bits and pieces of those former planetary orbs
came together to form the beautiful blue-and-green sphere we call “Earth”.
The older I get the greater is the
thrill I feel each time I open the lid to an old cigar box I call my “treasure
chest”. Nestled inside are tiny jars of frankincense and myrrh, a piece of
rusty barbed wire that divided the two sides of a conflict in which I fought
and which serves to define me still, and a maple tree tapping-spile which sings
a happy song of my Vermont youth. There also are my father’s 1917 Marine Corps
dog tags and my own Pilot’s Log, along with silver pieces of eight brought up from a 1715 Spanish Galleon by a friend
and diver, and a “widow’s mite” cast
in the time of Israel’s last Old Testament government and dated to the time of
the birth of Jesus. I get a similar sense of prehistory when I handle a
fossilized Otodus Shark tooth
excavated high in today’s Atlas Mountains in Morocco where once great oceans
deposited it as much as 67.5 million years ago and from an artifact recovered
from a British East Indiaman which sank off Weymouth sands in 1805.
I yet still dream of obtaining an
old perfume bottle found in 2003 by divers visiting the remains of the S.S. Republic at a depth of 1700 feet,
100 miles off the port of Savannah. The steam side-wheeler had returned to U.S.
Government service after being captured by the Confederates. The historic
vessel was sunk by the 40-foot waves of a hurricane on October 25, 1865.
Retrieved from the wreckage were dozens of glass perfume bottles with stoppers,
bearing the name I. Edrehi, the
N.Y.C. manufacturer. Isaac Edrehi was my Great Grandfather. And that makes it
personal
One of the salvaged 1865 perfume bottles
cast for I. Edrehi, Al Cooper’s great grandfather.
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