Lancaster Castle and the Fox Box
By Kathy Bruin
In sixth grade, the mom of my classmate Kirk offered a quilting class in their home. I signed up right away as I was already interested in textile crafts – my parents had bought me a sewing machine for Christmas when I was 10 years old. When the day came for our first class, right in the middle of the school day, Kirk’s dad pulled up in a blue 1952 Chevy pickup truck and about 8 kids piled into the bed of it and rumbled the dozen blocks to their house. Pulling up to the house for the first time we could see that this was no ordinary house and Don and Gale van Druten were no ordinary parents. Above the shingled garage sat a Bavarian style clock tower, and beyond it a bell tower which we were delighted to discover came with a rope that hung into the living space.
Don was an inventive craftsman and had reimagined their basic one-story home into a magical land of invention, fun and creative possibility. I had never before thought about things in terms of invention and was fascinated by their approach to their home and their life. Their house and their approach to projects continually reminded us “If you don’t like it this way, you can change it! If you can envision it, you can create it. If it doesn’t work for you, make it better.” Anywhere you looked you could find a brilliant, clever, playful or practical invention. Decades before it came into vogue, the van Drutens had pulled down their walls to create a central room with open rafters and broad plank floors covered in areas rugs and mismatched antique wooden furniture with pretty homemade cushions.
The kitchen, its entire floor painted as a giant rainbow, sat at one end of the room, and was separated from the rest of the space by an island, the backside of which was a beautifully crafted cabinet facing a wooden dining table with carved legs. When the table was deemed too low to make a good workstation for quilt making, metal coffee cans were employed under each leg to raise it just enough.
When you opened the cupboard door next to the dining table, a lever unfolded tugging a shelf toward you with a toaster so you could toast your bread right at the table. The lunch I associate most with my days at the van Drutens is tuna fish on toasted Oroweat Honey Wheat Berry bread.
In the center of the room was a wood burning stove and not far from it a nickel was crazy-glued to the floor, which over the years gave us all endless glee whenever a person bent over to try and pick it up. Beyond the stove was a paved walkway along a wall of windows lined in hand milled wooden frames, with a rose garden just outside.
The doorbell was a wooden handle connected to a leather strap which wound around a pulley connected to a series of large jingle bells. I was fascinated by the playfulness and ingenuity of the doorbell and didn’t know whether I liked it better from the inside or out. Standing inside the door pulling it from the outside or having someone else pull it while I watched from the inside as the rope spun around the wheel to get the strap of bells to ring. Water from the gutters burbled down large cast iron chains to beds of pebbles below. Simplistic and elegant.
For as inspiring as Don was, it was Gale who held my adoration and respect. A calm, deliberate and talented woman, she awed me with the absolute perfection of her stitches and the creative decisions she made in quilting, crocheting, and appliqueing. During our weekly lessons with Gale we learned to make simple block quilts, later graduating to nine patch, log cabins, and crazy quilts. We learned to tie them and then to hand quilt them.
At 34 years old, Gale was a pretty woman, fair and thin and just taller than the tallest of us girls. Her dark brown hair was cut short, unprofessionally, her eyes were blue and her teeth were just imperfect enough to make her seem both glamorous and authentic. Both Don and Gale swore openly – not too much but enough for us to think they were the coolest adults around. Swearing aside, they just were the coolest parents around.
I became very close with the van Drutens to the point where Kirk and I pretended to be brother and sister, and several of my best friends and I spent countless days and nights of our adolescence in their home. We made dolls and costumes and quilts and kites. We played in Kirk’s tree house, sat in the hot tub nestled in the rose garden, played in the big round doughboy pool, spat watermelon seeds, learned how to whittle and even enjoyed “happy hour” on warm summer evenings when Don would pour us each a rum and coke with just a little rum in it. In the winter we sat near the fire and worked on our projects, or read or told stories.
One day Gale brought out an old wooden cigar box and set it on the table in front of us. On top was a felt fox head she had created by layering orange, brown and white pieces and just a bit of padding underneath to make it three dimensional, like an applique glued to the lid of the box. Opening the box we found a smattering of tiny objects. “What is it?” we asked, jostling to get a good look inside. “What do you do with it?”
Gale said it was a Fox Box and explained that each item in the box had one rhyming match and the object was to find each of the pairs; a block with a rock, say, or a cork with a fork. We took turns sorting through the items to find the 20 or so pairs and immediately set out to make our own Fox Boxes.
When building a Fox Box (or in my friend Stacy’s case, a Car Jar in a giant mason jar because she couldn’t find a wooden cigar box) you begin to scan the world for tiny items to be game pieces and, holding them in your hands, you run through possible rhymes that can be acquired in miniature. A key? No problem: bee, tree, tee. Train? Sure! Plane! Easy! A tiny plastic baby? Baby, baby…no, no easy match there. Hat? Yes! Mat, cat, rat.
In my late twenties I rediscovered my Fox Box and unveiled a colorful, jumble of time encapsulated treasures. I unpacked a wooden block, once my younger sister’s, paired with a rock from the van Druten’s garden; a brittle rubber band to rhyme with the plastic hand yanked off of GI Joe – or was it Ken? A doll house lamp went with a .10 cent stamp; a plastic dime store drum with its match, a slice of Wrigley’s Doublemint gum – by then 17 years old – still in its light green wrapper and still oddly pliable. “Keep foil wrapper to put gum in after use” the wrapper said. I picked up a 2” nail and its rhyme, the very best item in the entire box: a pink Barbie scale that perpetually declared “110” from a clear plastic screen smaller than my pinkie nail. Wow! That’s fricking crazy! I thought, with grown up feminist eyes.
Surprised and thrilled that the Fox Box was still cool, I immediately made another and began bringing them to parties. I loved how drawn to them people were and I seemed to have an unlimited interest in watching people play. I also envied them discovering the Fox Box for the first time. They look so simplistic at first and yet your eyes and mind zip from one thing to the next, often missing obvious rhymes: flag, car, shell, block, tree, bell, wait what rhymed with bell? Where did it go?
Beside a low table someone would dip into the box while others looked on waiting to play. I was quick to offer guidance if I sensed someone feeling pressure to pick up the pace. “It helps to say the items aloud” I said. “Don’t worry about getting through it quickly – it’s actually harder than you’d think!” Some people were argumentative and took issue with the labeling of certain things. “This is a badge” I was told about the shiny tin Sheriff’s badge, “not a star.” “Is this a card or a jack?” a man asked, flapping a playing card at me. “This can’t be a goat, it has the coloring of a cow” someone insisted. “Well yes,” I responded, “but look at the shape of it and see how it has a little beard? It’s a goat.” When my mother played the game she shouted out random pairings like “Dog…DUCK!” “No Mom, we’re looking for rhymes,” I said and we both giggled at the absurdity of it all.
Just before my 30th birthday I arrived home to find a wrinkled brown paper sack in the hall outside my apartment door. There was no note, and opening the bag I found a square bamboo box with a chunky fitted lid. I was pretty sure that it was from my boyfriend, Mike, an elusive, brooding man whose college buddies had nicknamed “Grandpa”, yet he was not inclined toward sweet or romantic gestures. He would never tell me he loved me in the two years that we dated, though years later, when we met to catch up, he mentioned that his subsequent girlfriends had all been jealous of me because of “who I was to him”. “Who was I?” I asked, but didn’t, even then, get an answer.
Still standing in the hallway, jacket on, keys in hand, I opened the box and peered inside, immediately recognizing the enormity of the gift. This man has made me a Grown Up Fox Box! I brought it inside and began making matches. A nun with a gun – brilliant! Two mice with two dice, nicely played; a sunflower seedwith – yes it’s weed! (later smoked and replaced with a bead.) I moaned at the forced pattern and lantern. Tied with a strand of thin red string, he had included one of his silky black curls, to rhyme with squirrel.
I have both memories and skills from that time. The lessons I learned, and imagination that was sparked by the van Drutens and my time at Lancaster Castle were transformative. I keep my Fox Boxes at home, stacked one on top of the other, now a set of five. When anyone asks about them they all come down and the items themselves, like tiny representations of my life, are unpacked and sorted and matched up, each one with memories of my childhood home and my childhood friends; of the van Drutens and the life changing influence they had on me; of nights in my late twenties laughing and drinking and studying human nature; of love unspoken yet movingly and unexpectedly demonstrated. Simple everyday items with simple everyday significance sealed and stacked and kept just where I know to find them.