Fake Modesty

 This year I have been writing my year end letter, throughout the year.  A few minutes ago, in an entry, I wrote the phrase "...readers, (perhaps the null set)".  Ten minutes later, reflecting on this choice of words, I realized I was not being modest, I was showing off my knowledge of the term "null set".  I'm wonder at this moment if I will take this fake modesty out in the final form of the letter.  

A Glove Story

A Glove Story

Back around 1983, as I was riding my bike, I noticed a nice glove lying in the street.  I stopped to pick it up and saw better that it was indeed a fine glove.  It was leather with a fleece lining and it reached halfway up my forearm.  I supposed that it had been dropped by a motorcyclist.  I looked for, but did not find, its mate.  I did take it home and threw it somewhere in the basement. 

About a year later I chanced to spy a very nice pair of ladies’ dress gloves, made of soft leather.  I took them home and they were immediately integrated into the wardrobe of my wife and daughter.  At that time, I was commuting to work by bike and in the days and weeks that followed I began to notice quite a number of gloves lying in the street.  Eventually I began to pick them up.  At first the intriguing thing was simply the quantity to be found.  Every few days, on a route that I traveled regularly, new gloves would appear.  As time went by, I began to appreciate the diversity of style and function as well as the quantity. After a while the thing began to be addictive.  The more I found the more I was amazed and the more I looked.  What had begun as a casual retrieval of one sturdy glove became interesting, then fascinating, and finally, something of a compulsion.  Before long I found myself looking for gloves in the street even while driving. 

It’s fair to say that all this was becoming a bit of an annoyance to my wife Beth, especially since it is sometimes difficult to make a positive identification of something as small as a glove while driving forty or fifty miles per hour.  Eventually she became resentful of stopping for dried leaves, rags and other flotsam of the gutter.  Nevertheless, I continued, and it was not too long before there evolved a certain ceremonial dance of discovery, complete with “spiking” of newly found gloves.  It was about then that I noticed my children no longer wanted to go places with me. 

In any case about 175 gloves were gathered in the first year and a like amount in the second.  By the end of that year the basement walls were pretty well covered with gloves and the thrill of the hunt was wearing off.  In February of 1986 we set off on a six-month tour of the United States, featuring the Fourth of July in New York City and the reopening of the Statue of Liberty which had been closed for refurbishing for two or three years.   Picking up old gloves was not part of the plan. In Oregon on the morning of the second day, we stopped at a viewpoint to look at some wildlife and as we returned to our motorhome I noticed a glove lying on the ground.   By habit rather than intent I picked it up and tossed it under my seat.  A few days later in San Francisco we found three more.  There was also a nice pair at Yosemite.   

Another focal point of the trip was the Grand Canyon where we hiked to the bottom, camped for a night and climbed out the next day.  As we were breaking camp that morning the wind blew some article of ours into the bushes.  Our daughter, Meredith, went to retrieve it and when she stood up and turned around she was holding what we now call “the Grand Canyon glove”.  At that point gloves became part of the adventure. 

We found gloves in New Mexico, Texas, and in the little town of Start in northern Louisiana.  In New Orleans there were so many gloves littering the streets that it took the fun out of finding them. Biloxi Mississippi had a glove for us, but we found no glove in that little piece of Alabama that touches the Gulf of Mexico.  Florida yielded several as did Georgia.  South and North Carolina would not give up their respective gloves until the last few miles that we were in each state.  Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland contributed, but six or seven days in the Amish country of Pennsylvania provided no new gloves.  I guess folks there are too tidy.  We left PA and quickly scored in Delaware.  Then the friend whom we were visiting in northern Delaware suggested that we go up and catch a Phillies game.  Certainly a major league ball game was called for in a trip around the United States and to make it even sweeter, in the parking lot outside the stadium, my son found a batting glove - our Pennsylvania glove. In Elizabet New Jersey I found six gloves in one intersection – a personal best.  That brought us to the main objective of the whole trip, the Statue of Liberty. 

We enjoyed a great celebration in New York on the 3rd and 4th of July.  On the 6th when the statute was opened to the public, we went early to stand in line and climb to the top.  There was a great crowd of people waiting for the boat at the Battery and at the statue itself.  It took an hour and a half to move from ground level up to the crown.  From the lady’s feet to the crown there is a wonderful double spiral staircase, one side for climbing the other for descending .  After a laborious climb to the top one crosses a little catwalk peering out the small windows in Liberty’s crown at the skyline and harbor of New York City.  Then it’s the long wind down. 

From the staircase the inside of the sculpture can be seen.  It is the negative of what all those immigrants saw from the ships that brought them.  Looking carefully one can make out the tablets in Liberty’s left arm, the folds of her gown, her toes, etc.  Periodically there are little platforms adjacent to the staircase where one can step out of line and have a longer look.  Meredith led us down.  I was last and at a point near shoulder level I stepped out onto a platform to look more closely.  There as I stood scrutinizing some new copper pieces that had been installed during the refurbishing I suddenly saw, lying on a girder a few feet before me, an ordinary, slightly tattered, soft brown cotton work glove; a souvenir left for us by a workman, perhaps one of the Frenchmen who had worked on the refurbishing.  After a moment of amazement I called to my wife who had the camera. 

Beth had to push past other descenders to get back up to me.  We stood a few moments smiling and shaking our heads.  Then she took the picture and told me we would put it on the basement wall with a note that read, “On Permanent Loan To The Statue Of Liberty”.  Then it was time to go, but I had trouble leaving.  It was just not possible to depart without making some sort of effort to retrieve that glove.  The girder it lay on supported the platform on which we stood. There was a waist high railing around the platform and between the railing and the platform there was a heavy metal wire mesh that stopped me from just reaching out to grab my target.  With Beth holding the waist band of my pants I leaned over the rail as far as I dared.  The glove was at least fifteen inches from my fingertips.  I contemplated climbing over and out onto the girder.  For several stories below there was very little other than the copper skin of the statue.  Headline visions flashed before Beth’s eyes.  “Seattle Man Falls Through Statue of Liberty”, Millions In Damages”, “Wife Claims He Sought Gove”.  I thought better of it and reached again, this time with a shoe. Still six inches short.    Moments passed in fevered thought searching for a long object or a better idea.  The park rangers had been announcing that the wait to get to the top of the statue was now at least two hours, too long to think of going down, getting a tool and climbing back up.  We had to think of something or be satisfied with the picture.   

After several minutes Beth suggested that I try my belt.  It seemed unlikely to work, but as we had nothing else, I pulled it from my trousers.  I leaned over the rail and extended my arm straight out.  By dangling the belt buckle I could touch the glove.  Gingerly I pulled the buckle over the glove trying to nudge it inward toward us.  Turning the belt so that one edge was toward me stiffened it a little and I  managed to roll the soft cloth over one time.  I tried again – with success.  Then on the third roll the glove slipped from the girder and I watched it fall, down, down into the skirts of Lady Liberty. 

We had found it.  We had photographed it. We had done all we could to retrieve it.  I had watched it fall into the recesses of the statue where I was confident it would remain for a long time.  There was no remorse as we turned and again started down the stairs. 

At the bottom Beth and I parted as she headed for yet another line, this time at the lady’s restroom. On the way she ran into Meredith and still filled with excitement she exclaimed, “Meredith, you will never believe what happened to us.”   

Meredith replied, “You’ll never believe what happened to me.” 

“What happened to you?” asked Beth. 

“Well, I was going down the stairs and just when I got to the bottom of the statue, something hit me on the head.  I thought the whole statue was falling down, but when I looked it was a glove. “ 

“What? A glove hit you on the head?  What did you do with it?” 

“Well I stood there at the bottom of the stairway for a while and, as each person passed, I asked ‘Did you lose a glove? Is this your glove?’  When nobody claimed it, I put it in the backpack.” 

And that is how we got our Statue of Liberty glove.