World's Fair 1964

Could there be anything more than a blast from the past than a time capsule?

In today's NYT, the veteran reporter (probably someone who was eligible to take a buyout but ruled against it) James Barron, does a story on the relocation of the time capsule that was firmly implanted behind the Time-Life Building's cornerstone at 1271 6th Avenue (writing Avenue of the Americas still goes against my grain) in 1959, and is now being moved to the company's new headquarters on Liberty Street.

Woven into the story is a general description of what time capsules actually were and where some of the more famous ones have been placed and exhumed over the years in New York City. Thus, we get a story about time capsules at The New York Times buildings, and how Iphigene Ochs, whose father bought The Times in 1896, and who, at at 11 years-old in 1904 when the cornerstone was laid at Times Tower misspoke and declared the cornerstone to be laid "plump, level and square" rather than "plumb, level and square."

This was no doubt an intentful typesetting error perpetuated by a disgruntled union worker who wanted to make the owner's kid look stupid: substituting a 'p' for a 'b' on the text that was prepared for her to read. The letters are more alike than not.

But what really caught my interest was a description of what is in the time capsule from the 1964 World's Fair, held for two years in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. Because of massive delays, the Fair didn't actually open until 1965 and ran for two years, one more than the originally scheduled one.

Anyone who was alive then and witnessed the simultaneous construction of Shea Stadium, the Fair Grounds and the attendant roadways knows that there are probably people still entombed at the Rodman Street Long Island Expressway exit who were trying to get home on a summer's Friday evening. In fact, there should be a memorial to the Unknown Commuter. A distant cousin has been missing all these years.

Having lived in Flushing from 1949 through 1992, I always found all things Flushing related interesting. So when there was an ad hoc museum's display in a three-story brick house on Union Street telling the story of the World's Fair at Flushing Meadow Park umpteen years ago, I went.

I distinctly remember seeing what were described as the contents of the 1964 time capsule that was buried at the Fair Grounds. Mr. Barron makes mention of some of these items to be a bikini, birth control pills and some Beatles records.

I remember seeing what was a Beatles 45 rpm record--likely 'A Hard Day's Night'--and an American Express credit card. I don't know if what I was looking at were examples of what was in the time capsule, or what were the actual items from the time capsule. Mr. Barron's description makes it sound like the time capsule is still there, and awaiting an opening 5,000 years after its burial.

Despite a high water table in that area that makes you wonder why park water fountains were never found to be working, it is possible that the 1964 time capsule will be retrieved intact in 6964. There is a decaying wooden rowboat that has been sitting in Flushing Creek surely since Truman has been president. It is generous to consider Flushing Creek (somehow now considered Flushing River) to be a body of water and not congealed mining waste, but it is somehow liquid enough to be tidally affected by the moon, For decades I've seen that rowboat from passing LIRR Port Washington line trains somehow not completely disappear.

The Beatles may well last forever.

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