If You Could Tell the Future: Smithville Residents Share What They'd Seal Away for the Ages

Somewhere beneath the front steps of Smithville's old municipal library — the one that got converted into the rec center back in 2009 — there's supposed to be a time capsule buried during the town's centennial celebration. Nobody's entirely sure what's in it. Nobody's entirely sure when it's supposed to be opened, either. A couple of longtime residents remember the ceremony. Most people have forgotten it ever happened.

That's kind of the thing about time capsules, though. The burying is the easy part. The harder part is deciding what actually deserves to go in.

We put that question to a cross-section of Smithville residents over the past few weeks — teachers, retirees, teenagers, small business owners, volunteers, and a few folks who are just really hard to categorize. We asked each of them: if you could seal one single item in a Smithville time capsule today, something a future resident might open fifty or a hundred years from now, what would it be?

The answers surprised us. Some made us laugh. A few genuinely moved us. And all of them, taken together, feel like something worth preserving on their own.

The Things We Carry

Martha Delgado, who's taught third grade at Smithville Elementary for going on twenty-two years, didn't hesitate for a second. "A school lunch menu," she said. "People don't think about it, but what kids eat at school says so much about what a community values, what it can afford, what it thinks childhood should look like. Ours has changed a lot just in the time I've been here."

Her colleague down the hall, PE teacher and wrestling coach Darnell Okafor, had a different take. He wants to put in a pair of sneakers. Specifically, the brand that every single kid at Smithville Middle School seems to be wearing this year. "Whatever's cool right now, that's what I'd want future kids to find," he said, grinning. "Imagine opening a capsule in 2075 and pulling out something you've never seen before and realizing that was the shoe."

Retired postal worker Gene Hutchins, who delivered mail in Smithville for thirty-one years before hanging it up in 2018, had a more practical suggestion: a printed Google Maps screenshot of downtown. "Everything's changing so fast," he said. "Half the storefronts I used to deliver to aren't there anymore. A map from right now — that's a record of what we actually had."

The Digital Age Problem

A handful of residents brought up something interesting without being prompted: the challenge of preserving anything from modern life in a physical capsule.

"I wanted to say my phone," admitted Priya Nambiar, who runs a small bookkeeping business out of her home on Cedarwood Drive. "But a phone from 2024 isn't going to be readable in 2074. The ports will be wrong, the software will be gone. So I thought about it more and I landed on a printed receipt — from a local business, showing what things cost right now. That's something anyone can read, no technology required."

High school junior Caleb Torres had wrestled with the same problem. He ultimately landed on a physical photograph — printed on actual paper — of his friend group at this year's homecoming. "I know it sounds basic," he said. "But I feel like my generation doesn't print anything. If someone opens this in fifty years, they'll probably be shocked that we even had paper photos at all."

Roots and Remembering

For some residents, the capsule question became a meditation on what Smithville actually is at its core.

Longtime volunteer firefighter Bev Kowalski said she'd put in a copy of the fire department's call log from a single week — names redacted, of course. "It shows what people actually need help with," she said. "Car accidents, kitchen fires, wellness checks on elderly neighbors. That's the real texture of a community. Not the festivals and the ribbon cuttings."

Farmer and market vendor Dale Whitmore, who's been selling produce at the Smithville Saturday Market since his parents started the booth in the late 1980s, said he'd seal up a seed packet. Specifically, heirloom tomato seeds from the strain his family has been growing for three generations. "That seed has Smithville soil in its DNA at this point," he said. "If someone plants it a hundred years from now, some part of this place grows again."

Eighty-one-year-old Ruthanne Perkins, who was born and raised here and has outlived two husbands and one local newspaper, said she'd put in a church bulletin from this past Easter. "Not because of the religion, necessarily," she clarified. "But because it lists every single person who helped — who made the food, who set up the chairs, who sang. That's who we are. That's the part nobody remembers to write down."

The Unexpected Answers

Not everyone went sentimental.

Local mechanic and part-time standup comedian (his words) Frank Soriano said, without missing a beat, that he'd put in a pothole. "A real one, from Main Street. Preserved in resin or something. So future generations can see what we were dealing with and know that some things never change."

Teenager Amara Osei said she'd put in a screenshot of Smithville's Nextdoor feed from a random Tuesday. "It's always someone asking if anyone else heard that noise, or someone complaining about a dog, or someone trying to give away a couch," she said. "That's honestly the most accurate portrait of small-town life I can think of."

Library director Tom Fessler — who, yes, works in the building that may or may not have a capsule under its front steps — said he'd include a library card. "Specifically one that's been used," he said. "Worn down, a little beat up. A library card is proof that someone in this town wanted to know more about the world. I hope that's still true in a hundred years."

What We're Really Saying

When you lay all of these answers out side by side, something becomes clear: people aren't just picking objects. They're picking evidence. Evidence that we were here, that we cared about certain things, that daily life had texture and meaning even when it felt ordinary.

A seed packet. A worn library card. A lunch menu. A pothole. A photograph of teenagers at homecoming.

None of it is grand. All of it is true.

If Smithville ever does put together an official time capsule — and honestly, maybe it should — the committee would have a hard time choosing. But maybe that's the point. The choosing itself is the exercise. It forces you to ask what you actually think matters, and what you'd want a stranger, a hundred years from now, to know about the place you called home.

We'd love to hear your answer. Drop us a note at the Herald, or find us on social media. What would you put in?