Feeling like the world’s biggest idiot, and wondering how much it was going to cost to extricate a truck the size of Nevada from a tow lot, I called the Portland Police Department. For the next forty-five minutes, as a cool blue night gradually lowered itself over downtown, I walked around looking for the truck, first on the street where I was sure I’d parked, then on the nearest cross streets, and then in a grid whose scale grew ever larger and more ludicrous.įinally, I returned to the street where I’d started and noticed a small sign: “ No Parking Anytime.” Oh, shit. Yet I’d somehow managed to misplace it in downtown Portland-a city, incidentally, that I know as well as any other on the planet. It had tires that came up to my midriff, an extended cab, and a bed big enough to haul cetaceans.
Antique five pocket cash drawer driver#
The friend to whom it belonged once worked as an ambulance driver oversized vehicles do not faze her. This was a serious feat, a real bar-raising of thing-losing, not only because in general it is difficult to lose a truck but also because the truck in question was enormous. I parked, went to the event, hung around talking for a while afterward, browsed the bookshelves, walked outside into a lovely summer evening, and could not find the truck anywhere. Eventually, having spent an absurd amount of time looking for the lock and failing to find it, I gave up and drove the truck downtown instead. This was annoying, because I was planning to bike downtown that evening, to attend an event at Powell’s, Portland’s famous bookstore. I’d just arrived home and removed it from its packaging when my phone rang I stepped away to take the call, and when I returned, some time later, the lock had vanished. I got the wallet back, but the next day I lost the bike lock. Yet later that afternoon I stopped by a sporting-goods store to buy a lock for my new bike and left my wallet sitting next to the cash register. Prior to that summer, I should note, I had lost a wallet exactly once in my adult life: at gunpoint. When I returned to claim it, I discovered that I’d left my wallet behind as well. A few days after that, warming up in the midday sun at an outdoor café, I took off the long-sleeved shirt I’d been wearing, only to leave it hanging over the back of the chair when I headed home. The next day, I left the keys to the house in the front door. My first day in town, I left the keys to the truck on the counter of a coffee shop. In very short order, and with very little effort, everything fell into place.Īnd then, mystifyingly, everything fell out of place. Someone on Craigslist sold me a bike for next to nothing. Another friend was away for the summer and happy to loan me her pickup truck. I’d lived in Portland for a while after college, and some acquaintances there needed a house sitter. I normally live on the East Coast, but that year, unable to face another sweltering August, I decided to temporarily decamp to the West. A couple of years ago, I spent the summer in Portland, Oregon, losing things.
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