Headline: Bothersome moneybags

Jim Banholzer

I’m forever finding sacks of money and whatnot while performing early morning deliveries. Generally at the crack of dawn, these treasures come into view like ancient Indian petroglyphs -always appearing in the eastern sun. It’s as the people from Twin and Boise suspected –the streets of Sun Valley are sometimes spanned with gold.

It’s indecipherable why this keeps happening. I figure that folks out whooping it up, while craning their high-altitude stories, distract themselves, and then leave a purse or camera on top of their rig, which enjoys a pleasant little ride –until that first speedy curve at the edge of town.

Highway clean up crews can attest to this, often finding objects of interest, which have sling-shot off vehicles and into the guttural high grasses for foxes to quizzically sniff at.

Before turning the items in, I generally try to do a little detective work, to save the police some trouble. For instance if I find a cell phone and it’s still operational, I’ll call my phone from the lost one to obtain its caller ID. Then, presuming that the person who lost the phone will still check their messages from a remote phone, I’ll leave a message telling them, at which jurisdiction they can pick up their lost items.

Day planners and address books are trickier. People often neglect to mark their own name within the planner –creating a challenging mindbender for Good Samaritan finders. Once I went through a full day reminder without discovering the loser’s name –until paging back to “Grandma” in the address book. Connecting with person separated from their belongings Grandma, I described the teeny purse along with the finding circumstances. Good old Grandma’s concentration led us to easily discover which of her grandchildren had lost the purse. They even handed out twenty bucks along with their thanks.

“Ice” is the ticket now. Emergency authorities say to file your crisis contact numbers clearly under “Ice” in the event of an accident or separation somehow from your prized possessions. EMT’s are trained to look for this -whether it is through cell phones, address books or even tattoos- in the event patients are incapacitated from communicating.

Digital cameras present new angles. One summer I found one sitting atop Proctor Ridge. Clicking through their slideshow, I didn’t recognize anybody, so figured they were part-timers or tourists. When I handed it over to the police and confessed my good excuse to be nosy, we all had a good laugh.

Sometimes people are not so appreciative. Once an old girlfriend, found 170 bucks in a bag at a gas station. After doing some detective work, the lady demanded we bring it across town immediately –as if we had something to do with the reason she had lost it. We obliged, but then she never looked us in the eye nor breathed a syllable of thanks. However, Brooke and I looked still looked upon this event as a worthwhile experience.

Once, our lively crew was returning from visiting a great waterfall. A group in an adjacent boat-like station wagon had an un-tethered expensive looking camera, enjoying a lovely lensed ride atop

their car’s roof. As the light was about to change green, our animated crew started chanting and pointing to their top. They thought our roughneck gang to be a ship of fools –perhaps madmen pirates, until on a last second whim, one of the mellower boatmen had the valor to reach out the window and save their camera and days photographic records.

Often I’ll see what looks like a wallet or purse just off the side of the road. Most rusherby’s are figuring that since nobody is stopping, it can’t be a true value item. And a lot of the time they are right! A few days after turning in one lonesome wallet, I thought I saw yet another, while driving up Phantom Hill at the edge of the evening twilight. After five losers in a row had expressed no gratitude for the return of their items, I thought, “From this one, I shall keep the money, and like a modern day Robin Hood toss the coinage to kids in Poverty Flats!” Fully confident of the riches to be held, I scooped my hand, into the light almost gone and skimmed up what I thought was a smushed leather wallet from the long roadside shadows –until I got back to the headlights and shuddered, seeing in my speedy greed I had skimmed up, and was trying to pocket a perfectly rectangular leathered squirrel, gone off that old dusty trail.

Epilogue

Immediately after this musing, I dreamt that my wallet was pick-pocketed. Within a few hours (still within the dream), it showed up on a bench at the YMCA bereft of cash. Soon after, I mentioned the dream to a friend. He said, “T hat’s funny, because I had a dream the night before yours, in which I found a wallet with cash bulging from its seams. Our tacit agreement was that he would buy me a strong Himalayan tea –in one of our next dreams.