What's in the bag?
Years ago, on summer vacation at a motor lodge in Mid-Coast Maine, I was sitting with Steph. She and her Connecticut family have reserved rooms at the same place, same week, as our family each year for a about a decade. We enjoyed our time together, sitting and talking on our shared porch. We also shared many conversations with the owner there. She married into the motor lodge business, which had been in her husband's family. One morning, she told us she how she found her neighbor's cat dead in the road. She felt so awful about the loss and didn't want her neighbor to wonder what happened to her pet. So she put the cat in a brown bag to bring it to her. When she found no one home, she put it on the doorstep and left. I remember the horror my friend Steph had at this turn of events. "That lady is going to come home and see that bag," Steph screamed. "And she's gonna think someone left her a bag of zucchini from their garden. And instead she's gonna find her dead cat. Good grief." I thought about this story Memorial Day weekend. Here's why. My daughter drove to Maine and found her tire flat the next morning. She filled it with air and drove it to a nearby tire business. There, a nice woman looked it over and said the tire was fine. But the valve stem was leaking and needed replacing. She said it could be easily repaired but not for an hour or two, so my daughter left it. When the call came that the car was ready, the woman told her there would be no charge. My daughter brought a four-pack of beer in a brown bag to the garage, thinking that would be a nice gesture of thank you. "There isn't a dead cat in this bag is there?" the nice woman asked my daughter, who was beyond flummoxed by the question. "Why would she ask me that?" my daughter said, adding she was so taken aback she didn't ask. That was when I told her about the cat-in-the-bag story from so many years ago. Now I can't prove that nice woman lived in the house that had been delivered a dead cat. But you can't tell me it's impossible either. If you drop off bounty from your garden this season, perhaps consider using a clear plastic bag.