Saturday excitement

I had some unplanned excitement yesterday.

I decided to visit the American Banjo Museum in downtown OKC, as a research trip (I'll soon be reviewing a chapbook of poetry centering on the banjo and it's history). It's a charming two floor affair in the Bricktown area — immediately east of Lincoln Blvd and the railroad tracks — and covers the history of the instrument from Africa to the present.

I returned home for lunch, then resumed my journeys with more traditional Saturday errands — the Belle Isle Library to pick up a copy of Jeff Buckley's Grace; a visit to OKC Music and Sound; a jaunt to Akin's, a local health food store; and, finally, the grocery store.

I reached into the deep pocket of my mackinaw to pull the shopping list out of my checkbook. My pocket was empty.

Of course, I panicked. I had the shopping list fairly well memorized, so I went on shopping and paid with my debit card.

I took the groceries home, all the time hoping I had taken the checkbook out when I had eaten lunch. No such luck.

I called the Banjo Museum, and the nice lady at the front desk looked in the vicinity of the desk. Wasn't there. The obvious answer was to retrace my steps.

I had parked about three blocks away that morning, so I parked as close to that spot as possible on my return. No checkbook.

I walked through the whole museum, even the men's room. No checkbook. There was a little movie theater where movie clips which used banjo prominently on the sound track were displayed. The front desk lady suggested it had fallen out there. I hadn't sat down in there, but I was desperate. No checkbook.

Next stop was the library, which was 38 blocks south and about a half mile west. As I was driving, the penny dropped. The front desk lady's suggestion had a whole new application.

My checkbook had fallen out of that deep pocket of my red mackinaw into the rear passenger floorboard behind the driver's seat.