Lost-and-Found Continued Chronicles

I think I'm glad that I can't find my Social Security card.

The fun of "finding" continues.

Among my discoveries from boxes and piles and even an attache case yesterday was the heart-warming image of my most precious of "Preciouses" and much beloved "Big Man."  

Yes, Willie and Annie earned monikers early on from their dad, and we still use them from time to time.

Big Man has lived up to his name by standing taller than his dad, and our Precious keeps us on our toes in wonderful ways. 

Speaking of toes, hers are pretty cute in this photo, and how 'bout that hat on Big Man!

Anyway, I found this photo while searching through my attache case last night.  It was loaded with items I've used over the years for book/writing-related speeches. 

And, speaking of speeches, I gave a speech last year to the Idaho Librarians' Conference.  For weeks before the speech, I searched for my pilfered copy of Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Adventures.

Early in the spring of 2010,  while signing an agreement to speak at the convention, I had to come up with a title for my presentation.

I decided on Jean Shepherd's book title because reading his stories to my students over the years, along with those of Patrick F. McManus's,  had inspired me to try out authoring. 

Well, a two-week search of our premises and all those moving boxes last September turned out fruitless.  I eventually had to order a new copy of Wanda from Amazon.com for the speech.   

The ongoing search of our premises and all those moving boxes in this year of 2011, hoping to find the lost Social Security card,  netted a big find for me yesterday morning.

A closet in the upstairs hallway provides storage for sheets, pillow cases, blankets, Christmas stuff and a few boxes of sundries.

Yesterday morning,  while looking in a box on the top shelf, there she was:  Wanda Hickey in all her glory, complete with the taped-together cover.

You see I had used it so many times in my English class during its overdue years from the local public library that the wear-and-tear eventually caused Wanda's cover to deteriorate.

You can't judge this book by its cover---or maybe you can---in this case, having been used that often means there's good stuff inside.

And, yes, there were many good stuffs---as Shepherd told about the next-door neighbor Bumpus tribe, his sitting on the hump in the family sedan on vacation road trips and his ill-fated date to the Senior Prom with Wanda Hickey. 

My students loved those stories, and I loved reading them.

I was ecstatic yesterday to find Wanda once more, so gleeful, in fact,  that I took the book downstairs to show Bill.  He had introduced me to Jean Shepherd early in our marriage. 

And, who knows: maybe this ongoing saga of searching for the Social Security card may elicit some new stories for my own next book.

I keep threatening to write about entering into the age of OLD.  Not that my mother is old; she says all those people she knows at The Bridge are old, but she's not. 

Still, I've learned some valuable nuggets during the past several years about that senior era of life, and I'm thinking that I ought to get with the program of writing about it before I forget. 

You see we're all headed there, just like we're all headed toward Social Security and our own eras of losing more and more touch with where we put things.

I must say, however, there is a good side to losing all this stuff and embarking on the annual fall hunting season where those boxes, nooks and crannies we rifled through last year produce such pleasant surprises as cute photos of kids and even dear old Wanda. 

The great part of these findings is that we can once more relive wonderful memories of yesteryear. 

Today I'll keep looking, and who knows what I'll find. 

Happy Wednesday.

Special Note:  Blogger has some new features, which I'm trying out this morning.  If your screen looks the same as mine, you can decide how you want to look over my post titles.  Just click on the options, such as "classic," "magazine," "sidebar," etc. and you can see the post titles in some rather attractive arrangements.

Let me know what you think.  I like it so far, even though I'm still looking for some of the original elements----always looking for something.