FREEPORT, Maine — Two groups of students—50 years apart—met in Freeport's Memorial Park Friday to swap out time capsules.
However, things did not go quite as planned.
Eighth graders from 1970 planned to dig up their capsule after more than 50 years, but couldn’t find anything in the dirt.
According to clippings preserved by capsule designer David Phinney, the Portland Press Herald reported in 1974 that police found the capsule vandalized and its contents scattered on the grass. But the students were about to graduate high school at that point and move on with their lives. Phinney and a few of his classmates who showed up on Friday weren’t sure if anyone was able to get the metal tube back in the ground since its irreverent removal.
Meanwhile, current seventh graders had bought a capsule from Amazon and were about to bury it in the empty hole where Phinney's mates thought there's might be.
But the device didn’t come with a water-tight gasket. So, a carpenter who was watching the spectacle offered to make a custom one.
Nevertheless, the crowd had a fun day and Phinney made his peace.
"It’s sending a piece of yourself forward, I think," he said, describing the act of filling and placing the capsule. He then thought of the vandalism from 50 years prior. "It doesn’t really bother me. It may turn out that they may make some improvement to the park here in another 100-200 years and they may find it then."
That day may come. But, before then, the present-day teens vowed to put their cylinder in the ground as soon as the gasket was fitted, and to return in 50 years—hoping for better luck than that of their elder neighbors.