Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
The mystery of the child’s spoon began here.
As mysteries go, I am aware that the two I want to write about today aren’t exactly on par with the tombstone found in the Yellowstone River.
Still, these are both rather touching, I hope you will agree. The first one I ran into this weekend, when my wife and I were walking our dogs in the old neighborhood. At the corner McDonnell Boulevard and Locust Street, a couple of blocks due south of the main entrance to the MSUB campus, we came across the little sign at left.
If you can’t read it, the sign says, “For the person whose child lost this spoon.” And hanging from the sign is one of those rubber-tipped spoons that have been used since time immemorial (or at least since my girls were babies) for the administering of Gerber food.
It seemed a bit crazy at first — considering the value of the spoon and the labor that went into making and posting the sign — but it was also strangely endearing, as if we’d left Billings and stumbled into Mayberry, circa 1960. I sincerely hope that the child and his or her spoon are soon reunited, if they haven’t been already.
With that in mind, I was walking my dogs at Two Moon Park today (my boss allowed me to take a long lunch), when I came upon this long-sleeve Montana State T-shirt. It was draped across a log a stone’s throw upstream of the lower parking lot, as if it had been pulled off with every intention of gathering it up again before heading home.
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
The (presumably) lost Montana State shirt.
Granted, it would be more of a tragedy if it were a University of Montana shirt, but it’s tragic enough. I’m guessing it’s a boy’s shirt. It looks like it would fit a child of maybe 7 or 8. There are a few small stains on the front—ice cream, maybe?
I didn’t think it would make any sense posting a sign as the finders of the spoon had done, since the shirt itself would be at least as noticeable as a sign. And all at once I wonder: should I have left the shirt there? Was my Good Samaritanship in fact a bad move?
Well, anyway, I’ve got it now. So if any readers have a child who lost this shirt, or know who the owners might be, please let me know. And here’s a picture of the shirt’s tag:
Yep, that’s the tag.
