Henrietta Hay's Column

I can find many ways to waste time, but almost all of them are more pleasant than the hours I spend hunting for lost objects. I usually find the wayward widget eventually but the search is frustrating and leaves me in a very bad mood. I probably have the largest collection of single earrings in town. I am pleased to see that wearing two non-matching ones is coming into style.

Once I left a garment bag in a closet in Ely, Nevada and remembered it in Grand Junction, Colorado. But I did finally miss it and get it back. A friend of mine was not so lucky a number of years ago. She was taking her son's guitar to Denver for him, and while packing the car, laid the instrument on the top. When she got to Vail she remembered where she left it, but they never did find the guitar. Sad. Her son was - probably still is - a fine musician but he got a new guitar. And speaking of the arts, a member of the local Chorale laid his music on the trunk of his car, forgot it and drove off. He never recovered the music, and we wonder what the person who found it did with it.

I often wonder about people who lose things that they never find and apparently don't know they have lost. A Denver Post reporter tells of losing an earring in her gym. She went hunting for it in the lost and found box. She never did find the earring, but she found five sets of car keys. How did the people get home? And how did they get in the house after they got there? And how come they never missed their keys?

Bronco fans leave stuff you wouldn't believe after the games. One enthusiastic female fan cheered until her dentures fell out and she spent the rest of the game hunting for them. Another woman lost a shoe on the fifth level and she didn't miss it until she got to the gate. One interesting transaction involved a guy who left his denim jacket. Whoever found it took it home and wore it to the next game. Then that man went off without it and they returned it to the first wearer. The Broncos do odd things to peoples' minds, but the Ultimate happened after a Guns 'N Roses concert in Mile High. Somebody left a car after the show. It was a Chevy Blazer. It was never claimed. How stoned can you get?

And then there is the stuff people just throw away. I have a couple of energetic and community minded friends who keep the junk picked up from four miles of roadway here in Mesa County. Every two miles along major highways there is a little blue sign that tells you what group or individual is responsible for keeping the roadway neat. Usually it is a group-- an organization, church, and business. Out in DeBeque canyon there is a stretch kept clean by the local Smokers Club. That's probably the only place they can smoke any more. Occasionally individuals or families assume the responsibility.

My friends are building a car out of the parts they have found. There are taillight lenses, windshields, bumpers, spark plugs, tail pipes, and parts of engines, tires and lots of license plates. Once they found a 1950 plate, which tells us how long it has been since that road was cleaned up. Do you suppose the driver changed his plates on the way to Delta? One day they found a good wrench and tire-iron together. We assume the driver had a flat, fixed it and drove off without his tools. We can only hope that his next flat was not on the Pasadena freeway.

Aluminum cans litter the verge like stars on a clear night. They tell me that either there are a lot of Bud drinkers here, or that Bud drinkers are sloppier and more apt to throw their cans out the windows. Oddly enough, there are not many whiskey bottles, and those they do find are chiefly the little ones that come off airplanes.

There are lots of single gloves and shoes by the side of the road. I would think that anybody would notice if he/she got out of the car with only one shoe. One foot would be lighter than the other one, or maybe colder. There are odd articles of clothing and, of course, many dirty diapers. One note from which I withhold comment: they have never found a condom.

Now that I think about it, maybe I should quit wasting time hunting for lost widgets. Maybe I'd never miss them.