Bet there has been a time or two in your life when you felt that Lady Luck smiled on you. Maybe you were in a Vegas casino, or stumbled upon something that made your day.
It was on one of those “lucky days” that I first felt that I had been smiled on.
I was walking home from school one late summer afternoon when I was in the first grade, and doing my best to waste as much time as I could before I reached home.
It was just then that I noticed something on that narrow dirt path that shouldn’t have been there — but I was glad that it was. It was a little red coin purse that must have fallen from some lady’s purse.
It was partially in the weeds, almost covered up with the dust kicked up on the path. I picked it up, wiped it off, and opened it up — inside was possibly a dollar’s worth of small change.
I was rich!
Between me and our front door was a gas station I passed each way to and from school and, most importantly, they had a little candy counter and a pop cooler.
My mom had always said that: “A fool and his money are soon parted.” Oh, how right she was. Within a few minutes I had a pocket full of candy and a couple bottles of Coke. By the time I reached home, I’d begun to realize that there was a possibility my mom wouldn’t share my enthusiasm over my new found wealth.
My ready response was: “Finders keepers!” Well, sometimes it worked.
Around that same time, my brother Lowell and I were making our way (on the same little dirt path that we walked to school) to the grocery store that served as a bus stop for the bus that would carry us to downtown Reno, Nevada, and the movie theater, that we visited most Saturday afternoons.
Lucky me, I spotted a $5 bill in the weeds along the trail. I grabbed it up, and showed it to my much wiser (and more honest) 10-year-old brother, Lowell.
He plucked it from my grubby hands and when we reached the grocery store he took it inside, showed it to a clerk and explained that: “We found this in the weeds, and maybe you could return it to the person who lost it.” Lowell handed my five bucks to the clerk who, with a smile, assured us that it would be taken care of.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that probably as soon as we walked out the door, he stuffed it into his pocket.
Finders, but not keepers.
Last of my juvenile bonanzas was a couple of years later, after we’d moved to Douglas, Alaska.
Downtown Douglas wasn’t much of a downtown: a drugstore, a couple of bars, the city hall and the grossly misnamed “Colosseum” move theater, and a small apartment building — a building where my mom’s best friend lived, and where she would visit, drink coffee and have a cigarette or two.
Next to the apartment building, on the north side, was a vacant lot, and next to that, a bar. That vacant lot was where I played while Mom visited. There was a stone retaining wall on one side of the lot, and I was playing with a little toy car in the chinks in the wall.
I spotted a little speck of green that seemed to be out of place — when I looked closer, that speck revealed itself to be MONEY! Big money — a $20 bill! A tidy sum, that at today’s value, would be worth $200!
It didn’t take long for me to run in and show Mom the lucky find; my personal “Mother Lode.” It also didn’t take long for Mother to take possession of my “lode” (the bill) and to let me know that it would be a lucky thing for the whole family.
I don’t know if it was that same day, or the day after that she made the trip to Juneau to spend the cash, but I do recall when she returned from her $20 spree, I had a pair of new shoes, and my three siblings also shared in the wealth.
I guess when I thought about it, I wouldn’t know what to do with so much money — what could I do with $20 worth of penny candy anyway?
So, I was the finder, but not the keeper. I liked the shoes though.
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What a Life: Finders keepers, some of the time - Loveland Reporter-Herald
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