This is a Christmas story but might better fit on Page 2 of the Daily Journal because it’s also about crime, except it’s stale for a crime story since it happened 20 years ago, and whatever happened might not have been a crime anyway.
And it’s not much about Christmas either.
It’s about how things disappear from our house, starting way back when someone stole our Christmas tree stand. Really, someone stole it. No other explanation.
One year we had a Christmas tree stand and the next year we didn’t. One January morning we took the ornaments and lights down from the tree, stored them on the laundry room shelf, put the dismembered tree in the yard waste bin, took the stand back to the garage and, exhausted by Christmas, could hardly wait til next year’s holiday season.
But next December the tree stand was gone. There are only so many places a tree stand can hide or be hidden and ours wasn’t in any of them. Think about your own Christmas tree stand: Beyond sticking it in the trunk of your car or throwing it over the back fence there aren’t many places to put one.
If you think I absentmindedly tossed ours into the trash, no. It was half the size of a beer keg, and I’d be as likely to throw the TV set into the trash can, or the cat.
On the other hand, no one would steal it. Even crack-addled brain-dead zomboids with no sense and no money would find something else before taking a tree stand. A lot of things, actually. (But if you looked for things to steal in our garage you’d go to a neighbor’s garage instead.)
And even our garage has better things than Christmas tree stands to steal. There are old Buster Cleveland artworks cluttering the walls and some partially full cans of house paint. Rusty saw. A broken chair. The neighbor’s garage, definitely.
So we wound up buying a new plastic Christmas tree stand that year, wondering and grumbling all the while about where it could possibly have gone and what kind of moron would steal a used tree stand when a perfectly good broken chair could be just as easily taken.
I think every house does weird things. Socks disappear from a sock drawer or laundry basket, as do jars of mayo and ketchup from refrigerators. Gas gets siphoned out of car tanks two or three times a year. Park in the driveway and by morning the car’s out in the street.
No way to know whether our house causes more mischief than others, but a significant and memorable extraction occurred years ago when an earring disappeared.
Gold earrings from Italy had sentimental value and that’s why wife Trophy turned the house upside-inside-outside-down trying to find the missing one from her pair. It also had value because a single earring is semi-worthless.
Following much fruitless searching, our friends Berry and Olivia Robinson said they were heading to Europe, stopping in Italy. Trophy gave them a photo of the lone earring, told them which jewelry shop on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence had them, etc. The Robinsons returned six weeks later with a small jewelry box containing an identical pair of gold earrings.
The following morning an incredulous Trophy discovered the longtime missing earring sitting squarely atop her pillow on our bed, downstairs where we sleep seven nights a week. Think and conjure all you want. Speculate on suspects, question our memories or our honesty, roll your eyes and shrug. But it happened just like that.
More recently we were tidying up after dinner, putting leftovers on plates, wrapping them in Saran Wrap, when the box of Saran Wrap itself vanished from the kitchen counter while we were using it. We checked the shelves, the waste basket, the pantry, but it had escaped and was never seen again.
A high school yearbook stored for decades in an old cardboard box disappeared. Who would want it? Or even find it? Why not take the entire box with the other worthless stuff? And don’t forget the broken chair in the garage.
Suspects, Inspector Columbo? Denouement, Dame Agatha?
Buckeyes redux
The influx of Ohioans into Mendotopia starting 50 or so years ago has been frequently discussed and commented upon, and to this day no one knows how many arrived, or why. I’ve written yards about the Buckeye phenomenon through the decades, and have concluded that had the county Built a Wall a lot of problems might have been avoided.
Now I’m in North Carolina. Paula, my next door neighbor grew up in Rocky River, a Cleveland suburb, and her husband is from Sandusky where my mother was born. Leslie, three doors down, is from Sheffield Lake. My friend Rich, directly across the street from us, went to Ohio University in Athens.
A couple days ago we had Robin come over to help with a small project; she grew up in Olmsted Falls, just west of Cleveland, and graduated from Bowling Green. So did I. In separate casual conversations with three middle-aged Black guys I found all had either lived in Shaker Heights or had family there.
These stats are gleaned from a total of no more than 15 or 20 people I’ve had sufficient contact with to learn where they’re from. I wonder if it’s too late to Build a Wall.
(Tom Hine thinks “The Case of the Missing Christmas Tree Stand” would make an excellent 12-episode Netflix series. TWK thinks his role should be played by Casper the Friendly Ghost.)
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