Time Capsule

By: D. Larry Patterson

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Three years into a comfortable retirement, the economic meltdown of 2008 wiped out any chance of Larry Preston and his wife Lynne continuing their privileged lifestyle, forcing them to deplete their devastated, dwindling savings each month. Now a rabid pit-bull, Lynne made Larry’s life a living hell, constantly berating him with a never-ending harangue that he abandon retirement and find employment. The only other option was to sell their big home in an affluent neighborhood, give up vacationing three months a year, and drastically downsize their cushy lifestyle. Larry always ended up in the right place at the right time, living extremely well, without exerting much effort. The trend continued. A History Channel documentary about the failed Whittaker Aircraft Company reminded Larry that shortly before dying in 1954, his Uncle Arel gave him a Whittaker stock certificate he believed to be worthless. In fact, Whittaker eventually merged with Boeing and the 1941 stock split so many times that it was currently worth enough to solve his financial woes and, best of all, get Lynne off his back. The stock could be Larry’s salvation. Unfortunately, over fifty years had past since Larry, at age nine, buried the stock certificate and a few treasured objects in a cobbled-up homemade time capsule, in the backyard of his childhood home in Kansas City. Confident the stock was still where he buried it, Larry set out to find it. Locating the time capsule and reclaiming the valuable stock certificate seemed like a simple task. In reality, the search quickly turned into a twisting, turning, seemingly endless bi-polar Odyssey of ups and downs, near-successes, blind alleys, and frustrating failures.