Donation Box Notes

   I was digging around in my old desk this morning and came across a familiar looking folder bulging with hundreds of little notes, all crinkled still from being stuffed into the enlarged coin-slot of the donation-box I installed down at the hot spring years ago.  Chances are, if you ever put a note in the old donation box, I still have it.

   In the early days I installed a donation box down at the hot spring between the two foot-walks to help out with a few small improvements, the donation box being one of them.
I recall being excited over getting maybe $25 on a packed weekend, and used to joke that I was having a hard time just paying for the donation box. Someone informed me that the coin slot was too small for serious donating so I enthusiastically spent an afternoon filing out the hole to receive larger denominations.

 
   In short order, also stuffed into the new enlarged coin-slot was all manner of proposed legal tender such as, and not limited to, Canadian Tire money, a partly used boarding pass to Bowen Island, cigarettes, cigarette butts, joints, twigs and grass, pull-tabs, and pounds of flattened-out beer bottle caps. As well, crumpled up notes would invariably tumble out with the pack-rats nest of items when I unlocked the trap door on the bottom. Strips of cigarette pack was a common medium, as were words written on the back of a Petrocan, or a government liquor store receipt, or spare coffee filter.

One notable exception was written on a strip of paper thin birch bark.

Some were a few bold words with a stubby felt tip pen, while others wrote  tiny on both sides, or scripted carefully on a sheet of toilet paper.

Generally they followed the same theme of, "Thank you Thank you Thank you!!

Some were propositions, such as the offer of a sail boat trip, dinner, and places to stay in the city. 

A scented note of delicate hand would appear every few months, all it would say was, 'Cute bum!' followed by a little smiley face. I can't be sure, but I like to assume it was from a female admirer.

                                         They came from all over to enjoy Tsek.

    As awful as it sounds now, I used to have my name and address posted up the outhouses at the campsite. I had notices stapled up in there with some basic information, rules of the establishment, and a box number in Mt. Currie for the campers who didn't have money at the time, but wished to mail flattened beer caps or twigs and grass later.
   Seemed like most of my notices ended up down the outhouse hole for purposes other than reading, and I had a hard time keeping them tacked up in there. If you look on the walls of the old campsite outhouses you will see about a million staples. 

I had at one point considered printing up the notices on sandpaper.

 

                               

                               Might be my favorite, pretty much sums it up.

   Well, you get the idea. Theres been times over the past 20 years I've come across the note file and had to question keeping them all. But I always put them away again,  I remember the good feeling I always got from these notes way back, simple thanks in a different time.  It is the same thing now, when I open that folder during a desk clean and then sit and look through them all, they always make me smile, and a few make me laugh. While most are from people who have gone on to other places in life, some are from folks that still frequent the hot spring, while some are from those that have passed on in the ensuing years. 

   I think I better put all those notes away once again to enjoy another time, they always take me back to a simpler time and the prime of life. I'll save them to enjoy again at the old folks home someday.

Thank you.