The Hiding Place

IF we hadn’t put fresh branches from our fallen Blue Spruce

    That shed needles shamelessly on the mantle and hearth

         So that I had to use the vacuum hose to pick them up;

I don’t think we would ever have found Ed’s Kindle.

     As I vacuumed, I noted a black corner poking out the black fireplace vent.

         “That doesn’t belong there,” I thought as I pulled out . . .Ed's Kindle?!!!

Lost since Snowbird.  It must have fallen as we charged it.

    Chalk that up to another great find.  Such a happy feeling.

         We must add this story to our Great Finds Book.

Maybe it doesn’t top Lynn and DeLoy’s Quarter Story;

    But it’s right up there with the leather hand-tooled purse, the lost wallet,

          The camera left at Rainbow Bridge, the Sketcher shoes and the diamond.

    Have I ever told you the Quarter Story?  It is our most famous “herd” story.

In DeLoy’s own words:

About 1944, my brother Lynn James was out to the herd with Daddy by himself.  He had a quarter in his pocket.  With no store there, it had no immediate value.  He was playing a game in which he made little mounds of clay soil—one with the quarter in it and the rest without.  He wanted to see if he could confuse himself.  He was so successful, he lost the quarter.  This was beside the trail in the box canyon between The Marking Corral and our present Deer Camp on Top.  I went back out the next time they came to town.  When we went past the site, Lynn told me about the quarter.  We looked for it without success.  Each time we went by after that, we would often look for it but mostly, we would just remind each other that that was the spot.

After we grew up and returned to the Oaks to hunt deer, we would always comment on the same thing each time we passed the spot.  One deer season 30 years later (1974), I was walking back to camp with Parl, my sister Verla’s, husband.  And I told him, as we had the previous years, about The Quarter.  After lunch, Lynn, Parl, and I were walking back past the same spot.  Lynn started to retell the same story.  Parl said, “I know.  This is the famous spot where the quarter was buried.”  I looked down where I was walking and there—on an inch-high pedicel of clay soil—was THE QUARTER!  I reached down, picked it up, flipped it in the air to Lynn, and said, “And here it is!”

Isn’t that an amazing story?  I heard it so many times; I thought I was there too.  In fact, I thought I was the one who either lost the quarter or found it after 30 years--or both.