Mike Jones and his Temple of Doom
What's In Your Garage?
I need to clean out my garage.
Not because I’ve been commanded to do so or feel some lingering guilt about my procrastination. No, it’s the result of a 19-year-old kid who died more than 3,200 years ago.
My little epiphany came to me as I stood inches away from some of the greatest archaeological finds of this or any other era. Yes, the Egyptian pharaoh, King Tutankhamun, got me to thinking about my personal “artifacts”.
What if by chance, some cataclysmic event occurred? What if an undiscovered volcano or wayward meteor suddenly splashed an impenetrable layer of ash, rock and mud over my garage? What would be my legacy?
After all, those damn pharaohs set the bar pretty high. Last time I checked, I don’t have any gold coffinettes painstakingly adorned with semi-precious stones standing by to hold my internal organs for all of eternity. Nor do I have any statuettes ready to do my bidding in the afterlife.
Three-thousand years from now, when some intrepid archaeologists find their way into my well-preserved garage, I doubt that my Daiwa computer reel from the early 1980s will glow like those icons in an Indiana Jones movie.
Nor will there be any diabolical traps, spring-loaded spears or giant, rolling stones to make them think they’ve found something worth finding. Sure, they might inadvertently trip over a crusty box of unopened Banjo Minnows or stumble into a cobweb-covered collection of Color-C-Lectors, but so what?
Will they think they’ve happened upon a late 20th Century/early 21st century “Valley of the Angling Kings” or merely waded into a fishing trash pile?=
If I can finally bring myself to separate the wheat from the chaff, perhaps they’ll find a chamber filled with only the good stuff. At least the presence of German fishing line and Japanese reels would show a degree of cross-cultural diversity.
My real fear is that after they explore the main “tomb”, these future Harrison Fords will discover my less-than-king-like anteroom carefully ensconced above the garage via a clever pull-down staircase, popular among these early cultures.
It is here they would unearth my backlog of useless or long-forgotten tackle items that, for whatever reason, I couldn’t bear to throw away. This could be bad.
For in the blinding glare of a futuristic flashlight, any thoughts of an “advanced” civilization would crumble like a mummy gone wrong. Instead of experiencing the elation of finding a king as Howard Carter did in 1922, they would hurl their Martian-grade composite tools down in disgust.
How could a culture with so much promise waste their valuable time and resources on implements that were so obviously inferior, even in their own time? For that, I have no answer other than it is now my forsworn duty to prevent them from every finding out.
I am cleaning out my garage and I urge you to do the same. Don’t be the weak link in how world history is written. All it will take is for just one Popeil’s Pocket Fisherman to survive. Or a single Flying Lure to emerge unscathed. Then, instead of King Tuts, we’ll be remembered as King Nots.
-Michael Jones-
Outdoor writer for Bassmasters, Bass Times, Western Outdoor News, and countless other magazines throughout the US. Here are some of my excerpts from Boat and Walley Magazine that just might put a smile on your face.