Dig This: Fillmore Can’t Find ‘70s Time Capsule

It can happen to anyone, and we shouldn’t be ashamed when it does.

Take me, for instance. I lose my keys all the time.

My wife says, “Well, why don’t you just keep them in one place?”

“Well, I do. They’re just not there now. They’ll turn up . . . “

And so on.

I spend at least an hour a day looking for my keys and another 20 minutes in barbed dialogue about losing my keys. That’s why I often get to work shortly before noon, so exhausted I have to head for lunch immediately.

It’s also why I sympathize with Fillmore.

Fillmore has lost the time capsule it buried (nobody knows just where) sometime back in the ‘70s (nobody knows just when).

Others might lampoon Fillmore for this minor lapse, but nobody who loses his keys on a regular basis should presume to do so.

The city’s deputy clerk, Steve McClary, explained to me that the capsule isn’t quite what a reasonable person would think of as “lost.”

“We don’t know exactly where it is at this minute,” he acknowledged. “But we’re pretty certain we can figure it out if we find the right people and do enough digging.”

I didn’t have to ask him if he’s a man who loses his keys. Men who lose their keys never admit the keys are “lost.”

“They’re around here somewhere,” we say through gritted teeth. “They’ll turn up . . . “

McClary placed notices in two weekly papers asking residents to step forward with any information they might have on the lost--uh, make that “missing”--capsule. That led to newspaper stories, TV coverage, scads of telephone calls, consultations with former city officials--and no capsule.

“Most people I’ve talked to say they remember something--they know something was done, but they went to so many functions over the years. . . . It doesn’t sound like there was a lot of pomp and circumstance when they dropped this thing into the ground.”

It could be buried somewhere around Fillmore’s former City Hall. Workers there recently thought they’d dug it up, but it turned out to be an old water line. Or it could be interred somewhere around the high school.

And what’s inside is anyone’s guess; a retired police officer remembers everyone in the department signing a document for the capsule, but the rest is a mystery.

In any event, Fillmore shouldn’t feel too badly. Losing time capsules is as common as losing hair.

The International Time Capsule Society says most of the world’s 10,000 time capsules are gone and forgotten.

In Corona, workers tore up the concrete around the city’s Civic Center to locate 17 time capsules dating from the 1930s. The effort flopped.

In Hollywood, the cast members of “M*A*S*H” in 1983 buried a capsule filled with props and costumes in what was a studio parking lot. Nobody now knows its location, but the current theory is that it’s sitting beneath a new Marriott Hotel.

In Livermore last June, officials armed with spades and metal detectors scoured a park outside City Hall for a time capsule buried 25 years ago. They found pennies and bottle caps.

And on and on, across the country and around the world. History, it seems, is a lovely ideal when time capsules are buried for posterity, but it pales in real life, when people are so busy looking for their keys.

As for Fillmore, the lesson has been learned. A new time capsule was sunk in September outside the town’s new City Hall. It’s packed with items ranging from city budgets to animal crackers, and its site is marked by a plaque.

Finding the old capsule is just a matter of time, McClary said. He needs someone--an eager retiree? an Eagle Scout?--to pore through old newspapers and city minutes for a clue.

“I know we’ll find it,” he said.

I hope they do. Maybe my keys are in it.

Steve Chawkins can be reached at 653-7561 or by e-mail at steve.chawkins@latimes.com.