This is a personal entry, because they won’t all be deeply researched historical posts.
I was heading out for a run in the park, away from potential coronavirus carriers, and the pathway leads through the woods, since my building sits on the edge of Fairmount Park. As soon as I got to the trail I saw what looked like trash on the pathway. I went closer and saw it was a handbag that had been “tossed” (that is, gone through and dumped). It appeared soaking wet and I suspected it had been stolen and dumped. I looked at it and saw a credit card with a person’s name on it, so immediately pulled out my cell phone (thank goodness for cell phones.. And their cameras… for so many reasons) and called Wells Fargo. Of course, they told me I would have to wait 15 minutes to talk to someone, so I hung up. I then gingerly touch the belongs on the ground, observing a facemask with inserts, a soaked checkbook and then “Eureka” a business card.
I used the business card to telephone the realtor (whose name conveniently matched up with the credit card and checkbook). Thankfully, I got through to her and told her what I had seen and where I was. The bag had indeed been stolen, and I got to return it to her, especially the credit card and checkbook. I told her that if she wanted to come get it I would wait.
She sent her husband on bike (probably a smart cautionary move, given that a strange man said he found her belongings in the woods!). I waited some 15 minutes and he arrived, and was surprised at how close to the road it was dumped.
He snapped pics of the material on the ground where it lay, and I informed him that I had picked at the things a bit, because that was how I found the phone number, but had largely left it as is, and that if police did investigations like we see on TV maybe they could figure out who stole it, but alas, as a burglarized friend of mine discovered some years ago, the Philadelphia Police do not do that sort of CSI work for property crimes.
He expressed his and his wife’s appreciation that I had called and waited with the stuff. I explained that I would wish, if I were in a similar situation, that someone would do this for me, so I sure as heck should do it for someone else. He then pedaled off with the “gross bag” that he was, for sure, going to just “hand over” to his wife when he got home.
I then headed down the trail and found a fallen tree on the pathway which had taken down another still rooted tree. I struggled to free the rooted tree, and largely succeeded before FINALLY making it to my running trail and getting in my run. Hmm, so this seems like a pretty boring story, perhaps. Yeah. It is. That is the point. Simple acts of goodness are boring and easy. Perhaps, if we did more of those simple, boring acts of goodness, we would not have to share stories of the more spectacular acts of good necessitated by bigger and more substantial problems.
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