Shoulder Bags and Other Accessories--Part Two

March 15, 2017

SHOULDER BAGS AND OTHER ACCESSORIES – PART TWO

For many people Puxatawny Phil serves as the first harbinger of spring. They wait anxiously
each February 2^nd to see if winter is leaving early or hanging around. My nature loving friends watch for that first flash of gold that signals the blooming of forsythia, indicating that cold weather is waving goodbye in the rearview mirror. My daily stroll on the side of the highway has provided me with a different indication that the seasons are changing. I know that warm weather is coming when I start finding... new crap on the highway! During the cold months fewer runners, bikers, and walkers travel along the shoulder of the highway where they drop all manner of personal items like modern day Hansels and Gretels. Likewise, car windows remain rolled up against the elements, so there are fewer opportunities for lost items to show up on the side of the road. As spring begins, and I enter another season of abundance on my walk, I thought I would reflect on some of my more recent finds.

In part one of the Shoulder Bags and Other Accesories post, I recounted that my first find was a reusable bag, promoting some pharmaceutical company. Lots of other bags have shown up on my route in the last couple of years, but I no longer collect them. I stopped after reading a newspaper story about a man who had to be put in isolation because he picked up a sack on the road that contained dangerous drug making materials. I had visions of myself being stripped down and scrubbed by a hazmat unit like Cher in Silkwood. Remember that movie from the '80's where Cher (or was it Meryl Streep?) got contaminated by chemicals in the Kerr-McGee plant? I don't think I'd mind the public nakedness as much as the body scrubbing which would create seismic tidal waves of jiggling. Yikes! Those are tsunamis that would just keep coming! Anyway, I've stopped picking up roadside bags.

Finding money is a given. Hardly a week goes by that I don't find some kind of coin, usually just pennies, but I pick up enough silver to keep things interesting. When I go for extended periods without discovering any pennies, the universe seems to adjust by throwing silver in my path. One day I found so many silver coins on the shoulder of the road, that I accused a friend of salting my route like some kind of fiduciary fairy tale witch. He denied any culpability, but I'm still suspicious.

Not all the monetary items I find are coins. I found my second paper dollar last fall. Unlike the first one I discovered which was fluttering lightly atop some weeds, ready to fly away just seconds before I grabbed it, the second one lay hunkered down in a cove created by the broken asphalt on the side of the road. A second piece of monetary paper I found is a bright pink, five hundred Gran Banco note which is either legal tender from a country I don't recognize or part of a Spanish Monopoly game. I use it as a bookmark.

I also discovered a valid, activated Visa card in my path. When I called the corporation number to report my find, the company representative lauded me with praise for taking the time---unlike most people---to contact them. I didn't have the heart to tell her that I only called after my special someone gave me a sweet, but sadly disappointed, smile when I said a call wasn't necessary; I could just shred the card. I hate when he's right; it shifts the power paradigm in our relationship.

I'm a heavy metal lover, and I'm not just referring to Led Zeppelin. I'm attracted to all sorts of metals.....the cool feel of them, the heft of them in my hands. The shoulder of the road has provided me with all sorts of metal objets d'art.....well, they're art to me. The smooth, circular heaviness of the trailer hitch knob I found on my daily walk delighted me all the way home; as do the various giant bolts, nuts, and unidentifiable parts of tools that populate my walk. They all find their way to my garage where I spend time contemplating how to incorporate them into art projects.

The Missouri transportation department provides me with some of the oversized metal pieces, I believe. I find most of the Brobdingnagian screws and bolts after some roadside project has taken place. The DOT also gifted me with one of my most colorful roadside finds. For several days on my walk two summers ago, I noticed the reflective orange color of a transportation sign. Thinking that surely the state workers would come back to retrieve it, I walked on, but, on the third day, I examined the sign more closely and realized that it was destined for a gal with my political leanings.....in large, black letters it read, “LEFT.” I took it home.

My most prized roadside find required a strong nephew and his truck to get home. The large, disjointed section of metal pipes and cylinders I spied on a side road I walk to reach a full five miles each day interested me almost immediately. I waited two days before I decided it needed to come home with me. The loving, but confused, nephew who showed up to move the piece told me my find was the exhaust system from a pickup truck which was probably stolen and stashed on the side street for a later retrieval.

Originally I had visualized the metal unit as a kind of upright sculpture for my backyard, a la Ernest Trova and Laumeier Park, but, the longer the piece lay in my driveway, the clearer it spoke to me, saying, “Make me a snake!” I am delighted every day when I see him in the backyard, and, when the snow melts off his back each spring, that's my signal that it's time to find new treasures on the shoulder of the road.