Sampsons have many hunting stories: they have hunted deer, antelope, ducks, pigeons, chanterelles, Easter eggs, and snipe. But the ultimate hunt was for Vake’s lost binoculars.
After they retired from the plumbing business, Vake and Milly planned to do the retirees’ thing, to visit their children and grandchildren, who were then scattered to Anchorage, AK, Seattle, WA, Bakersfield, CA and Tucson, AZ. To prepare for their trips, they hid their most prized possessions that might attract thieves. In Vake’s case, that meant his hunting rifles and his big, clunky binoculars in a leather case.
Vake was a great one for using mnemonic devices, so when the trip was over, he had no trouble recovering his rifles. He had made up a number based on their wedding anniversary and the birth date of their first child. Count that many beams back from the door in the attic, and there were the rifles, under the blanket of fiber glass insulation batting. But the binoculars weren’t there. Vake and Milly did a survey of the whole house, but they couldn’t find the lenses.
Losing things wasn’t unheard of, among their senior citizen set. Their friend Ruby Sauter hid her diamond earrings, and nobody remembers if she ever found them.
Vake and Milly let their kids know, and everybody, one time or another, scoured the house for the binoculars, to no avail. Vake was tall, and stiff with arthritis, so I, for one, focused on high places that he could reach without bending or stooping, but I did not find the binoculars. Then the next generation went to work: When grandchildren came to visit, they were sent to find the binoculars, and they looked in places that only nosy little kids could think to look, but they also failed.
Vake lived out his life, and Milly entered an assisted living facility with serious memory loss, without their finding the binoculars. Then one day Mark found them. They were in the basement, underneath the bottom shelf in a sturdy work bench. Now he is ready to find the lost Port Orford Meteorite, or the original proof of Fermat’s last theorem! Or so he claims.
I think that we estimated the binoculars remained hidden for about 20 years.
ReplyDeleteYear ago, I remember grandma telling me that she could recall hovering behind Vake as he hid the binocular (although she still could not remember where) and her thinking "nobody would ever think to look there!"
I spent hours searching that house for those things. It became a running joke that whatever else got lost was hiding with the binoculars.
BIM