When I first hired on with this outfit, the boss suggested I pack around enough gear and food in my truck to keep me alive and happy for a week.

You never know, you know?

This being before a time when there were such things as cell phones. Or CB radios. Or even two-way radios that had dispatchers, or covered more than a quarter of the state.

Something happens to you out in the country, odds are, you were going to be on your own for a while.

Life was different then, too. Work until dusk, with an hour and a half drive home, only to come back out again at dawn... it was often easier to just fry up a pork chop on a sagebrush fire, throw out the sleeping bag, and wait for the sun to rise.

So I packed around camping gear and food for two weeks. Or enough for three people for a week or so.

But as technology improved, the need for such things lessened. With just about every new truck, something got left out. I think the tepee tent was first, followed the next truck by the folding tent stove.

Eventually, it all fit in a single wooden locker in the tool box.

Nowadays, dispatchers know the whereabouts of all the enforcement folks just about all the time. Us others in the outfit, not so much. But radio coverage is good for probably 80 percent of my part of the world, and cell coverage almost near that.

The emergency camping gear hasn't been out of the locker for at least two trucks now. The wife and I are pretty sure the last new truck arrived during strutting season, so everything just got shoved out of one truck bed into the other, and bolted down.

No sorting. No equipment checks.

No cleaning.

So today, as I got around to cleaning and sorting tools

and things to place into the new, new truck, I opened the locker and found...

Seven year's worth of dust.

And some pretty old groceries.

Anybody else out there remember Space Food Sticks?

I'm assuming they don't make such anymore. Tasted more like plastic, wax or crayons than food, but soon became an acquired addiction.

Imagine going all the way to the moon on those things.

I loved those plastic yellow bowls that you got with your margarine back then. Wide, shallow and rugged. This one was still functional, and had kept its contents protected through freezes and thaws, and years of bumping in the dust. How long has it been since restaurants served sugar packets with old cars printed on them?

Long before you found the yellow and blue packets on the table. Loooong before the natural granulated sugar showed up. (Which is good, by the way.)

Probably the oldest thing in the truck (even when I'm riding in it) is this:

For those who do not recognize it, it is the accessory packet for either a C-ration or K-ration. U.S. military meals from either World War II or the Korean War, I'm not sure which. A souvenir of my summer with the Forest Service.

Best things in these ration packs are the two pieces of Chiclet gum, and the P-38.

Hey, I gotta take away the comment about this being the oldest thing in the truck. When I'm riding, there is a P-38 can opener from one of these ration packets on my keyring which would be just as old.

Oddly enough, everything seems to have survived okay, except the package of StarBurst candies.

These had melted down, glueing themselves, the moldy Folger's coffee and the paper towels to the drawer.

And dripped through the drawer into the compartment below...

The dusty galoshes surprised me. I'd forgotten about them. Still in good shape. My best guess of the last time I wore them was October, 1992. When I had to chain up all four to use my rig as a deadman for another warden's truck, also chained on all four, so she could winch out another warden's truck (chained on all four) during the desert elk season.

Fun night.

And early morning.

So. All is clean (or cleaner) and in the new truck, or a trash bag. Yeah, I threw out most the food. And the toilet paper and paper towels (invested with dust throughout every layer).

Kept the Tang (drink of the astronauts, you know), and an unopened can of International House coffee.

Still not quite sure how long this stuff had been in there, though. None had dates that hadn't been worn off. How long has it been since a box of instant soup was 64 cents?

And the Space Food Sticks?

Yeah. I tried one.

Almost broke a tooth.

Think they'd sell on eBay?