Duality

Thème: TrouvaillesTrouvailles / Found Things

par Ed Hawco

At a roadside flea market near Salem, Massachusetts, I flip through a wooden jewelry box. There are some bracelets, some rings, a few brooches. Some unpaired earrings. It all seems a bit old fashioned and faded. I’m about to move on when I see a small pin-on button near the bottom – like the ones you see during elections bearing slogans and photos of stiff candidates in suits. It’s face down, so I turn it over and read “Steel Workers Union Annual Picnic, 1944.”

I ask the lady with the cash box what it means, but she doesn’t know. She bought the jewelry box, contents and all, at an estate action. The owner had died.

I lay down a dollar and walk away with the button. It is in remarkably good condition. The surface is unscratched and the metal backing and pin are free of rust.

I lift my lapel and slide the pin through. Who would keep such a button for so long mixed in with their finery? And why? It wasn’t stuck on an old ball cap or pinned to a dusty barn coat. It was in the box where, presumably, the owner kept her precious things.
For the rest of the summer I display the pin on the jacket I wear on cool evenings. Into the fall, the pin adorns my lapel day and night. Most people don’t ask about it, but I point it out and tell people how I came to possess this inconsequential little pin that must, indeed, have a story behind it.

I speculate with whoever will listen. Perhaps the Steel Workers
Union Annual Picnic of 1944 is where the deceased owner of the jewelry box met the love of her life, and she kept the pin with her precious things as a constant reminder.

Or perhaps that is the fateful day when she lost her love, and for 50 years she couldn’t let go of the memory. The mystery of it leaves me impatient because I know I will never find the truth.
The next summer I travel to Europe, the button still fixed to my jacket. I don’t discuss it with strangers I meet, but I carry it with and continue to think about it.

One night on the terrace of the Hotel Europa in Prague I drape the jacket over the back of my chair and settle in with a drink. It’s getting late and the only other people on the terrace are a few shifty businessmen and a handful of bored-looking prostitutes. The scene on Wenceslas Square is dying down and when my beer is finished I stand up and leave. I walk through the Old Town Square in the direction of the Charles Bridge and the rooms I have rented in Mala Strana, on the other side of the river.

The night is warm, so I don’t need my jacket. My jacket! I realize with a rush of panic that I’ve left my jacket behind, at the hotel. I hurry back but when I get there the terrace is empty and my jacket is gone.

I ask a waiter but he just shrugs. I look around, hoping to see one of the prostitutes crossing Wenceslas Square with my jacket flung over her shoulder, but all I see are a few stragglers here and there.

The jacket is gone. That’s no great loss – it was getting old. But the button from the Steel Workers Union Annual Picnic of 1944 is gone too, taking its mystery elsewhere.

A month later, back in Canada, I hear from a few people that they’ve received my postcards from Prague – postcards that were written and stamped and in the pocket of the lost jacket. Whoever took it at least had the decency to drop the postcards into a letterbox.

Perhaps that person is a romantic and wondered about the people in Canada who would receive the cards. And perhaps he or she is the type to wonder about the Steel Workers Union Annual Picnic of 1944 and why someone would still wear the pin, more than 50 years later, while sipping a beer at the Hotel Europa in Prague.

With the same theme:

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Second entry

1081 days ago