Daddy Days: Is one kid’s trash another man’s treasure?

I like to save stuff. I’m not a pack rat, but I have a good number of items saved out of nostalgia, as souvenirs, or to pass along to kids. I recently passed one of these things down to the 9-year-old.

He started playing baseball and was in need of a bat bag. It just so happened that I had a bat bag from when I played Little League. When I was 10 I made the All-Star team, and one of the best parts was that meant you got a bat bag with your name embroidered on it.

I came across the bag in the back of the closet and my first thought, as it had crystallized in my head for the past 25 years, was “I want to hang on to that so I can give it to my son someday.”

It sounds dense, but it didn’t hit me until right then that this day was “someday." After 25 years of having hung onto the bag despite half a dozen moves, that vague, future time wasn't a nebulous thing anymore. If that time wasn’t when my son first played on a team and needed a bat bag, when would it ever be?

So I got the bat bag out and cleaned it up in preparation to bestow it upon my son. Inside I found some fantastic mementos. There was a pair of batting gloves (were my hands ever this small?!), a handful of desiccated sunflower seeds (BBQ flavor I think, but I didn't taste them), and a Gatorade bottle.

But this wasn’t an empty Gatorade bottle and what it contained will either chip away at my claim that I’m not a pack rat, or will prove to be the closest thing to taking Jim Croce’s song “Time in a Bottle” too literally.

This Gatorade bottle from over two decades ago was half filled with water. New Orleans, Louisiana water to be specific. And I know exactly why it was there.

My family moved to Texas from New Orleans at the end of the '90s. I clearly felt I was leaving my childhood home, but I hazily felt I was leaving my actual childhood, too. Shortly before we moved and I was packing up my baseball stuff, I came across the Gatorade bottle with the water in it (it was one of those squeeze bottles with the squirt top so I would refill it with water for games).

I considered emptying the contents (probably on a brother’s head) and discarding the bottle, but the thought of being able to preserve this little token of New Orleans 1999 was too tempting. I suspected I would forget about it but the bat bag had a waterproof compartment that just begged to conceal a bottle full of precious childhood memories.

So I made sure the top was on tight, packed it away, and hoped this little time capsule would reach future me. I didn’t know that guy yet, but knew he’d appreciate it.

Young me was correct. I won’t bore you with all the great memories that silly little bottle of water brought back, but I will say the concept doesn’t appear to be unique to me.

I was recently re-reading Ray Bradbury’s nostalgic summer novel "Dandelion Wine" in which the 12-year-old protagonist’s grandfather makes wine out of dandelions picked from their lawn. This dandelion wine was “summer caught and stoppered” and meant in the heart of winter you could “hold summer in your hand, pour summer in a glass.” Grandfather had a small bottle for each day of summer 1928. Then, at the end of the book there’s this interaction:

“Boy,” said Tom. “What a swell way to save June, July, and August. Real practical.”

Grandfather looked up, considered this, and smiled.

“Better than putting things in the attic you never use again. This way, you get to live summer over for a minute or two here and there along the way through the winter, and when the bottles are empty the summer’s gone for good and no regrets and no sentimental trash lying around for you to stumble over forty years from now.”

One could think about this little bit of wisdom for a good long while. Which has left me wondering: Is my little bottle of water a variety of dandelion wine or sentimental trash?

I’m still not sure. But I do know that the bat bag won’t be in the attic or stumbled over. And that bottle of water sure let me relive summer of 1999 over for a minute or two.

Harris and his wife live in Pflugerville with their six sons. Please email comments or suggestions for future columns to thoughtsforcaleb@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Daddy Days: Is one kid’s trash another man’s treasure?