I got some groceries, $29 worth. I only had $27 cash in my wallet, so I had to decide whether to use the found money in my pocket. I decided to use a card instead. Then I put my groceries in my car and walked to the police station, which, as it turns out, shares a parking lot with the Stop & Shop-- right across the street from the Steamhship Authority terminal where the ferry comes in. You have to walk up a flight of steps to get to the cop on duty-- ground floor is a garage. Walking in ahead of me was that young policeman what's her name, who went to school with Older Daughter. She's kinda odd looking and has a twin. You know the one I mean, she used to sell the popcorn at the Capawock movie house. She's about five-foot nothin'. Her gun makes her look pretty tough, however.
Anyway, at the top of the stairs where she gets buzzed into the cop hangout, she asked if she could help me. I said, "I found some cash in the parking lot. If I give it to you and nobody claims it, do I get it back?"
Another cop was there, what's his face, the guy who arrested me in 1998 or whenever it was. He said, "after one year."
Then she said, "how much cash?" and I said, "twenty-one bucks." I was still thinking of just keeping it. And they both kind of smiled and he said, "Somehow I think you'll be getting it back a year from now. Just pick up a copy of the police report tomorrow for documentation."
So I gave them the money, and my name and address, and I said, "Boy, don't I feel virtuous". And he said, "Yeah, it's its own reward."
And then I said I remembered the story from a few years back about when Paul what's his face, the Brit guy who used to be married to Faye, left $3,000 on the counter at Cumberland Farms and somebody found it and turned it into the police, and Paul got it back the next day. A heartwarming story, made the front page of the Martha's Vineyard Times and Vineyard Gazette. The newspapers said he had been saving it for "a medical treatment" but I think he was planning to go off to Hazelton. He had been battling the drink for years, and he had finally decided to do something serious about it. Who knows but that he was drunk when he left his money carelessly on the counter? Shame on me for such idle speculation, but it's only a Husi diary, so. . .
Mostly, however, I was thinking about this whole old painful embarrasing memory of when I was so broke ten years ago that I wrote two checks an hour apart at that same Stop & Shop, when it used to be the A&P, for some ingredients for Thanksgiving dinner, checks for like, $12 and $8, and they both bounced, and after a long series of misunderstandings I got myself arrested for larceny by check--even though I had made them good & paid the $25/check fee, too. If I had had $21 then, that never would have happened, and I kept thinking that maybe the person who lost the money yesterday needed that $21 now as badly as I needed it then. Actually I'm currently unemployed and broke so I pretty much do need the money that badly. But what the heck. I'm not bouncing checks, so I guess I'm OK.
So now every Thanksgiving, Dear Wife and I give out the fixings for a complete turkey to anybody who needs it. It's a thing called the Family-to-Family program started by Dear Wife under the auspices of the Vineyard Committee on Hunger, of which she used to be the chairman-- for five years and which she still half-runs, because her successor doesn't have a brain in her head. For the Family-to-Family thing, we solicit donations of $25, which is enough to buy the dinner fixins. We give them out at the Baptist Church parish house. First year, we gave out forty meals. The next, fifty, and so on, up to our latest total of 100 or so. But lately the number of clients at the Food Pantry has gone down a little. We think it's because some of the Brazillians are going home. The weak dollar means that it's not so profitable for them to work here and send wages home, and the construction economy ain't looking too good no more neither.
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