My father's tackle box has been on my mind lately. When I was young he worked as an immigration inspector on the border between the USA and Canada. Those were the days before 9/11 when the worst they had to deal with were the poor Canadian looking for jobs in the US or drug smugglers trying to sneak a carload of drugs through the northern frontier.

Dad worked rotating eight hour shifts. That meant he would occasionally work a shift from midnight to eight in the morning. And in the winter, in northern Maine, there are very few people moving around at time. So, he took along something to keep him awake and keep his hands busy. He took his tackle box.

Now, my father isn't an avid fisherman. That tackle box was magical. He had many interests and hobbies and that box carried them all around for him for many years. It was small, metal, and worn, metallic gray in color where the paint was still clear. Inside it was pale green but you couldn쳌ft, or didn쳌ft, bother to look at the color once it was opened. For inside was magic.

Of course there were the tools but saying that gives you the wrong idea. Many people think of tools and see socket sets or claw hammers. Dad didn쳌ft carry such things in the tackle box. He routinely made his own tools, little knives with hand carved wooden handles and tiny chisels with bright sharp blades. There were little scraps of sandpaper, folded so only one rough side showed. Bottles of glue and paint were in there too, and the brushes, carefully cleaned after each use.

But also in the tackle box were his little projects. He would make ships in bottles and so you would find tiny ships under construction in there, toothpick masts with little scraps of sails, and bowsprits bravely leading the way. He experimented with scrimshaw on beef bone and inside the box might be small ovals and squares of his stock half polished and slowly becoming future pieces of jewelry sporting ships or whales or walruses. There was the unusual scrimshaw stock in there too. He had a piece of mammoth tusk in there and a piece of human bone.

There were little bits and pieces of other things in there as well. I remember a small vial of mercury that we loved to play with. These were the days before such things as mercury poisoning were heard of and I used to love to play with the little shining ball of liquid metal. That might explain a lot about me today쳌c

There was a tactile and aural excitement in handling the tackle box. It was coarse on the outside, thin metal and plastic. It had a distinct sound, a tinny metallic sound when you opened it. Then there was the sound of the shifting contents as you rummaged around looking for whatever was in there.

I쳌fm sure he still has that box somewhere but these days he has a shop, a room as long as a two car garage is wide and about a third as deep. That is his tackle box today and it is as full of magic as that old box he would tuck under his arm as he stepped out the door on those winter nights, off to sit in that little office on the border and carve and dream his dreams.