"The Box" by M.J. Norwood
– china sherds, cannonballs, and “hidey-holes”
A love of history is developed; the curse of the collector is passed along.
M. J. Norwood lives in East Bend, North Carolina, but spends much of her time with her husband restoring a 1966 Alberg 35 sailboat in New Bern. She is a member of the North Carolina Writers’ Network, and author of The Sandbar and The Shoals, the first two books in The Sandbar Series. Currently writing her third book, she continues to be inspired by the lasting memories of her childhood family beach trips to Topsail Island.
M.J. Norwood
Author’s Talk
Like so many authors, I started making up stories and writing them down when I was eight years old. That’s when my beach and history-loving parents went searching for a family project. They wanted to do something that would involve me and my older brother, so my dad sold the best stamps in his collection, to put a down payment on a lot on Topsail Island, with the assumption that our family of four, living in High Point, two hundred miles away, could build a house. And we did it. It took more than ten years, but we built a small, square, three bedroom house on an ocean front dune. We took frequent breaks, traveling down to Wilmington and Brunswick Town, out to Fort Fisher, up to Swansboro and Beaufort, visiting places of historical importance, and all the while exploring practically every inch of Topsail Island, and occasionally working on the house.
We found a shipwreck in New River Inlet, and had a couple of archeologists out to take a look at the ballast stones and artifacts that were uncovered at low tide. They told us to get what we could, and that’s how, for me, the collecting, and the inspiration, really started. I remember my mother picking up a white ballast stone and saying, “Wonder where this came from. What has it been through?” She also said that Topsail would make a great setting for a story, so I started making up stories and writing about some of the people I had met on the island. It took forty-five years to turn those stories into a finished novel. After countless rejections, I decided to self publish The Sandbar a couple of years ago. I’ve written a second book, and am currently working on a third. (Those nagging characters won’t leave me alone.)
A real collector keeps adding this and that, one thing and another, until they achieve the pinnacle—”a boat-load of stuff.” - the editor :-)
When I saw the subject of Curious Stuff, and the call for personal stories from Randell Jones, I knew I had to write about one of the boxes I came across in the attic of my parents’ house, after my mother died. I still have that box, along with just about everything else my family collected.
My brother and I had to sell the house on Topsail, but my husband and I have recently bought a sailboat to restore. It’s only —ha, ha, ha—four hours away. — M.J. Norwood
