Copper colored Key, two hooks with rough yellow paint.

Copper colored Key, two hooks with rough yellow paint.

When was the last time you put something important “in a good place” — and then couldn’t find it when you needed it?

This happens to me more often than I wish it did. I’m not sure whether my memory is getting worse with age, or if I just have more stuff to misplace than I once did. My personal mantra remains, “A place for everything and everything in its place,” but I’m still a long way from reaching that goal.

When I can’t locate something, usually it’s just an annoyance rather than an emergency, but either way, the frustration is real. Allow me to discuss two recent examples, the second of which our farmer suggested I write a column about, since it affected him and me.

Last summer I wanted to get a new little string trimmer with a rechargeable battery. I looked for something lightweight, with decent cutting power and a long-lasting battery charge. I ordered it online. It arrived in a timely way and worked like a charm. At the end of the season, I put the trimmer into storage in our wash house, but kept the battery and its charger where it had been all summer — near an electrical outlet in a corner of our kitchen counter.

Sometime over the winter — probably Thanksgiving or Christmas, when counter space became more valuable for preparing family feasts — I put the battery and its charger in “a good place.” With the arrival of spring, I reached for the string trimmer one day to chop off some long grass along the sidewalk between the house and barn. I went to the corner of the kitchen counter looking for the battery on its charger. I was patting myself on the back when I saw them setting there — until I realized that charger and battery belonged to another rechargeable tool.

I looked high and low for the trimmer’s charger, but had no luck. I was tempted to order a new trimmer, but remained hopeful I’d eventually find the proper battery and charger.

More recently, it came time for our farmer to harvest his winter wheat, which was planted adjacent to a little dirt lane between two fields. Although this strip is narrow and unpaved, for years motorists would ignore our “Private Drive, No Trespassing” signs. Things got worse after an industrial park was constructed just east of our farm and online navigation systems showed this obviously non-public road as the way to get there. That brought large tractor-trailer trucks into the messy mix of vehicles realizing this little pathway did not get them where they wanted to go.

As the industrial park continued to grow, it became necessary for us to block off access into the dirt lane using a chain suspended between two fence posts. Hanging on the chain is a sign reading “Dead End, Do Not Enter.” After some truckers tried to remove the chain and drive through anyway, we had to lock the chain in place.

The chain has worked well at blocking unwanted vehicles, but it also makes access into the adjoining cropland a challenge for our farmer, who has to dismount from whichever piece of equipment he’s bringing on site and deal with the lock using the key we’ve provided. Fortunately, the winter wheat harvest went like clockwork this year — combined one day, with straw baled, removed and soybeans planted the next day.

Dennis and I noticed a day later that the chain across the dirt lane had not been reconnected, which was understandable, since our farmer had moved his equipment directly onto our neighbor’s place, which he also farms. It was when we went to re-secure the chain that the problem arose. I couldn’t find our key to lock the chain back in place. I looked where it normally hung, but it wasn’t there. I looked where it had formerly hung — and it wasn’t there either. I looked in every other “good place” I could think of, but with no luck. This was especially maddening, because it had only been a little over a month since I had relocked the chain after needing to access the lane in our pickup truck.

Although I was preparing to use the old combination lock from my high school gym locker, Dennis fetched another key-operated lock from elsewhere on the farm and our problem was temporarily solved. I then redoubled my efforts to find the missing key.

To make two long stories short, I eventually found both the missing battery on its charger and the missing lock key — though neither of them were in “good places.” The battery charger had been hastily placed on the bed in a spare room, and had then gotten covered under paperwork I’d been organizing after the holidays. I found it while performing some overdue housecleaning.

The missing key formerly hung on a nail above an umbrella holder. I eventually thought to check out the bottom of the umbrella holder, and there was a key, which turned out to open the lock in question. Ironically, it was not the recently lost key, but one I had lost over a year previously. That other “spare key” is still in a good place somewhere.

Sue Bowman is a freelance writer in southeastern Pennsylvania.

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Sue Bowman is a freelance writer in southeastern Pennsylvania.

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