KNOXVILLE — Wendell Pruitt, 61, foreman of a contract crew replacing a water line on Chapman Highway, ate lunch on his tailgate Wednesday with a pen and the back of a work order, trying to decide what to say to whoever opens the box next.
The box is steel, about the size of a cooler, and the backhoe found it four feet down. The lid is stamped DO NOT OPEN UNTIL 1938. Inside were two notes and nothing else. The first, dated March 1938, says the box was opened as marked and asks whoever finds it to close it back up. The second, in ballpoint and dated 1971, says it was found as above and closed as asked.
“Both of them said they closed it,” Pruitt said. “I started to put down where we found it, and then I figured they’ll know where they found it, so I scratched that out. So I put ‘Nothing added.'”
He folded the paper small and put it in his shirt pocket while the crew got the lid on. Darnell Gist, 34, who runs the backhoe, said Pruitt patted the pocket and said hold on. “We took the lid back off,” Gist said. “We were all kind of expecting it.”
The box went back in the ground about a foot east of where it was, to clear the new line. Pruitt’s note was in the box by then, so it still says nothing added.