Here is a big pile of gravel in front of Ethel's car.


                                 

That pile of gravel wasn't always there, but it was there when I took this picture.

When I parked the car there this morning, there was a large iron box - one of those big, hulking old construction implements that always looks like it's been there forever, and will be there forever. I had nine miles to run with hill repeats, and didn't want my keys jangling for nine miles, so I hid the keys on a small lip on the back of the big iron box.

I did the miles, and then ran back to the car. When I got there....the box was gone.

And the area where the box had been - and a good bit more around that - was buried several feet deep in new gravel; the gravel had push marks on it, like it had been shoved around by a bulldozer.

I used some words that are not in the first 164 pages of my book of spiritual discpline.

I used those words twice.

And, while I was standing there on the gravel, it occurred to me to look around - what if, just what if, when they had moved the box, my keys had perhaps moved with it a bit? What if they weren't underneath all of those tons of gravel?

And then I saw, off to my left - there was another big iron box - a smaller big iron box - and somebody had put my keys on a lip on the back of that box.

Somebody was both observant enough, and thoughtful enough, to have seen my keys fall on the ground, realized that those keys belonged to that SUV, and put the keys somewhere where the owner would see them while he was standing there cussing.

I drove around, found some construction folks, and asked the foreman about it - nope, they hadn't had anything to do with that gravel. That was another crew that was working somewhere else. So I kept driving around, and couldn't find the folks who did this for me.

So now I'm going to buy a six-pack of good beer - not the kind that I used to drink - and put it in the place where those keys were left for me to find, with a note on the six-pack thanking whoever did that.

Somebody told me, when I told them about this - he said "You must be living right". I said, no, that the guy who put my keys there is living right - I'm just the beneficiary.