Key Takeaways:
- Today was the day that a new floor would be installed in the expanded lobby of the Whiting Road building in Fredericton, which is undergoing renovations.
- After the contractor began digging the safe out of its cement tomb, Carter said, people’s imaginations ran wild for about three suspenseful hours.
It wasn’t how the staff at Theatre New Brunswick expected their Monday to go.
The Whiting Road building in Fredericton is undergoing renovations, and today was the day that a new floor would be installed in the expanded lobby.
On the other hand, the head contractor found something within 20 minutes of starting the job. “You might require to carry a look at it,” he said to his coworkers.
“So we all ran over,” said Matt Carter, the theatre’s director of communications, “and staring up via a hole in the floor was a combination lock at the top of a safe.”
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“We stood on top of it for years and never knew because it was only about six inches below the ground’s surface, right where our coffee maker used to be.”
Carter said that people’s imaginations ran wild for about three suspenseful hours after the contractor began digging the safe out of its cement tomb.
“‘What could it be?’ we wondered. Who in their right mind would bury a safe on the floor? ‘What’s on the inside?'”
The structure, which dates back to the early 1980s, housed a fencing club and a dog groomer.
“Because it’s not that old,” Carter explained, “it ruled out any pirate treasure we might have expected to find, but it did open up many other possibilities.” “Finding a safe on your floor is still uncommon.”
Staff “tried to focus on their day” while the contractor chipped the safe out of the rubble but kept returning for updates.
The big reveal comes after 3 hours.
After about three hours, the contractor had completely removed the safe – an 18-inch-long cylindrical metal container – and began cracking it open.
So they poured out the water and smashed a prybar through the rusted layers – “And deep inside,” Carter added, laughing, “25 cents.” Inside, there were four quarters. A dollar was present, as well as a button.”
It was a bit of an anticlimax, he admitted, but it provided a solid day’s worth of entertainment for the cast and crew, as well as a funny story in and of itself.
The focus now shifts to figuring out “whodunit.”
Carter has documented the discovery and subsequent events, right up to the safe’s cracking open, on the theatre’s Instagram account, hoping that someone will come forward on the decades-old secret.
Someone went to the trouble of burying this, he reasoned, so there must be a story there. Meanwhile, he hopes they can continue the tradition by creating their time capsule.
“Maybe put a treasure map in there,” Carter suggested for whoever finds it next.
Source: CBC News
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