Time capsules  have been part of the high school curriculum for generations, with good reason. Children of today can have the enjoyment of picking out a few symbols of their time to bury for future generations to discover, and those who are lucky enough to dig up a time capsule get to glimpse into a time long gone. Unless, it’s a time capsule from a little town in Pennsylvania…

1979 Revisited

Imagine the rapt attention of the students of the class of 2009 as they opened the time capsule from 1979 after hours of digging (the class of ’79 apparently was very serious about their time capsule–90 minutes of digging only unearthed a small portion of the capsule) to find items that represented the long-lost decade, including:

• McDonald’s wrappers
• Mountain Dew can
• Sports Illustrated magazine
• Popular Science magazine
• The Old Farmer’s Almanac
• A Kiss concert program
• Medical reports
• Calculator
• VHS tape of a Penn State football game
• Various other articles

My How Things Have Changed

Before I continue, it’s important to note that classic rock is still very popular in places like central Pennsylvania, so picture the scene:  A 17-year-old boy, wearing a Penn State football hoodie, is listening to Kiss on an mp3 player while drinking Mountain Dew (and having eaten at McDonald’s last night) with a Sports Illustrated (Swimsuit edition) in his backpack, wondering why he just spent the last 2 hours digging a giant hole in the ground.

I’ll bet that the only thing that surprised these high school students were the pictures of people in the ’70s because those people wore pants that actually covered their butts.

Who knew that so little has changed in the past 30 years?

Note:

The story can be read here (Current, former students unearth ’70s time capsule), but you may not be able to read the story since, I believe, this newspaper still subscribes to the antiquated philosophy that archives should be not be free, or at least should only be seen by registered guests. The link will remain live only for a week.

–Paul