Sunday Spill: Personal History…Mystery New Yorker Tube

Personal History…Mystery Tube

This morning, while passing through the Spill cartoon library, I noticed some objects on a top shelf that needed to be rearranged (or else they’d fall off the shelf). Not wanting to bother bringing a chair over to stand on, I glanced around for something long enough to reach the top shelf so I could poke the objects back from the edge. I noticed a brown cardboard mailing tube (shown above) sort of resting behind some boxes (the tube is 31″ long and 2″ wide). Although I knew by the mailing label that it was sent to me from The New Yorker,* I had no idea what it contained.

I realized it was still sealed — it had never been opened. The postmark has faded in part, so all I can read is “March 31, 199.”  Nineteen ninety what? I’ll probably never know. 

Bringing the tube into the living room, and setting it down to photograph, I heard my wife ask, “What’s that?” I said that I didn’t know. She asked, “Aren’t you going to open it?” I said, “No. If I haven’t missed it in thirty some years, I don’t need to know what it is now. I’m leaving it sealed.”  I like a mystery.

_______________________________________________

*The New Yorker address on the label is 20 West 43rd Street. That’s the magazine’s third address (out of five), squarely placing it sometime in the years 1991 -1999.

From the Spill‘s map (since updated), The New Yorker’s New York

1. 25 West 45^th St  The magazine began publishing here in 1925  and remained at this address until 1935, when it moved downtown to…
2. 25 West 43^rd St.  This magazine stayed here the longest, from 1935 until late February of 1991. It was here that Thurber wrote and drew on the walls (a fragment of wall bearing Thurber’s drawings from here was removed and was relocated, in 1991, at  the magazine’s newer offices at…
3. 20 West 43^rd St. Basically a move right across the street, just south and due east a few feet. It remained there until 1999, when it moved to…
4. 4 Times Square (1999). Remained there until moving to…
5. 1 World Trade Center. (January 2015) Its current address.