Tuesday of last week was your typical Western Kansas spring day.  Looking ahead at the forecast I noticed we had a cold snap coming in on Wednesday, together with wind.  Lows of single digits and snow they said.  But Tuesday was in the low 70’s and no wind.   

I got started with the day feeding the two pens of calves, and then went to work in the office until lunchtime.  After lunch, I asked Bryce to help me get the group up from pen 4 into the alley so we could sort off a trailer load to haul to the sale later afternoon.

We took our time; it was getting plenty warm to be sorting as big of calves as they were.  We had around 25-28 sorted off and then did a final sort and got a final count of 15 that looked even with each other.  I guessed them in the low 7 weight range, but they turned out to be in the upper 7 weight range.

Because of the weight difference, when we went to load them, they wouldn’t all fit in the trailer.  So, I sent Bryce off with the first load.  Right then Austin called me and asked if I could bring a few parts out to where they were working.  I said, sure, and got on my way. 

Once on the way, though, I realized they were a lot farther out than I expected, and my hopes of getting a round of disc golf in during the golden hours of late afternoon slipped a bit. 

But I poured the coal on down an empty stretch of blacktop and was back about the same time Bryce was from his first load. 

Then I found out he had plans for the evening, so instead of playing the round here in town with the sweet daughter, I switched him and took the last load in myself. 

I kicked those heifers out at the sale barn, grabbed parts from several places in town, dragging the stock-trailer through each narrow parking lot and then slipped over to the high school course for as much of a round as the remaining daylight would give me.

I made it to hole 13 before it got too dark.  As I made my way back to the truck and trailer, I felt my back pocket to make sure my wallet was still there.  I rarely carry a wallet; it felt odd in my back pocket, but it was still there.

I pulled it out of my pocket, threw it in the truck and hopped in.  I made it home in decent time for supper. 

It was a day or so later that I needed my wallet for something and went to get it out of the truck I had used Tuesday.

But it wasn’t there.

I wasn’t so terribly worried as I have lost that thing a few times before, mainly by misplacing it somewhere here in the house.

But finally, by Saturday, I was beginning to wonder were it was.  I had looked in all the vehicles, Jan had looked throughout the house, and nothing showed.

I determined to have one last thorough look in all the vehicles and in the house Saturday morning and if I couldn’t find it, then that was that and come Monday I would need to start replacing what was in it.

As near as I could remember, there was about $6 of cash, three different credit cards, my driver’s license, and a health insurance card in it.  I had checked online Saturday morning to see if there had been any unrecognized activity on the credit cards and there hadn’t been any, leading me to believe that I had brought it in, placed it where I shouldn’t have, and likely it had been hauled out with a load of trash.

Enter Saturday afternoon.

My sweet daughter had called up a bunch of her friends to play disc golf in Dodge, and my good wife said she needed about 2 hours, and, as I later learned, $430.53 at Walmart. 

The weather had warmed back up and it was a beautiful afternoon with very little wind and temperature in the low 50’s.  I could either sit in the car in Walmart parking lot, or I could do something else. 

Since I happened to have a couple of discs with me, one named “My Sweetie,” and the other named “My Man,” it seemed that opportunity was knocking on the car window.  With those two comrades, how could one go wrong? 

I got myself over to the high school course, figuring my daughter and her youthful friends wouldn’t want an old man like me tagging along and hindering progress on the course they were on. 

As I was driving up to the normal parking lot, I thought, “Why not run over to the parking lot you parked on Tuesday and see if your wallet happens to be there.” 

A couple hundred feet away, I saw it, flipped open, there in the rocks.  It had been snowed on, ran over a couple of times, but was still there, waiting for me. 

There was only $1 in it instead of the six I thought I had, but who knows?  Maybe I remembered incorrectly.  If somebody did feel like they needed that $5, I’m sure I don’t mind, since they left the credit cards and my driver’s license.

It could be they got as far as pulling those credit cards out when they saw my grimacing stare from the driver’s license and called it quits right then and there.

Oh.  And my score? It was absolutely horrible.  The shades of its secret are so dark I dare not share it for fear of defilement to young minds.