Friday, March 2, 2018

'Somebody loves this woman ...She's probably heartbroken'

Rings (Metropolitan Museum of Art)



     Two days after Valentine's Day, Liane Troy went to the 10 o'clock water aerobics class at the East Bank Club. Afterward, she was on her way to a meeting of the Foundation for Women's Cancer when she saw something glistening in the melting snow by the bus stop at Orleans and Hubbard.
     She picked it up, wrapped it in a napkin, threw it in her purse, and went about her day.
     A couple days later, the retired educator noticed the napkin, which she had forgotten about. She rinsed off what was inside: not a piece of costume jewelry, but a 14k gold lady's ring, bristling with diamonds.
     "My parents were in the jewelry business," she told me later. "E.S. Ford Jewelry on North Avenue. So I knew it was something that was important to someone."
     Troy inquired at the Starbucks across from the bus stop. She stopped in the 18th District police station. Nothing.
     A friend suggested she go to social media but, as a lady of a certain age, she wasn't going to do that.
     "Being 60 plus, I'm not sure how to go about doing that and reaching the right person in the vast Chicago Metropolitan area," she wrote to me. "Any suggestions?"
      Hmm ... What's that old saying? "To a hammer everything looks like a nail?" To a newspaper columnist, every situation calls for a column.
     Or does it? The Sun-Times not the local shopper. One lost ring will draw other requests. The forehead-slapping carnival of confusion that is our daily politics will go unremarked upon for a day.
     And yet here is one woman who had found this ring, and feels it is important to do something. Plus the possibility of some unknown person out there who may have lost it under circumstances mysterious.

To continue reading, click here.


8 comments:

  1. If someone writes you that it's their ring, you should reply & ask them if they have a photo of them wearing it & forward it to Liane Troy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's a small world after all. Early in 1987, I saw something glistening in the snow near a fountain at the Chicago Botanic Gardens. Thought it was a piece of ice. It was "ice" all right...three different Loop jewelers appraised the diamond earring at around fifteen hundred bucks. One of them made it into an engagement ring, which I presented to my wife-to-be at the Berghoff.

    That image of a green, packed Wrigley should gladden my winter heart. Instead, seeing the vastly enlarged seating makes this old 1980s Left Field Bleacher Creature melancholy and sad. With so many more asses in so many seats (literally as well as figuratively), the days of the bleachers "where everybody knew your name" are gone forever, over a long time ago. But even if the older and smaller seating configuration remained, everybody would still be staring at their "devices" most of the time anyway, rather than talking to their neighbors and forming friendships.

    Yes, the mighty Cubs are winners at last, but in the process, something good has truly been lost, and unlike that ring, it will never be found again.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, Grizz, the verdant view of Wrigley Field featured atop EGD today is nice, but this is what it actually looked like, as of 2 weeks ago...

      https://twitter.com/WrigleyAerials/status/965674524246241285

      Sure, "something good has truly been lost," but while you probably paid $4 for your bleacher seats, you have the privilege of paying $85 to sit in the bleachers for a "diamond"-level game this year, if you plan ahead and manage to get a seat for face value. Oh, and BTW, left field sucks! ; )

      Delete
    2. Grizz65, please tell me I'm wrong if I guess that marriage was not long for this world. Be honest now.

      Delete
    3. Nu, for what reason would I lie, boychik? We dated for three years, lived together for another five, and finally got married. I gave her the ring after we'd spent eight years together, and we were married a few months later. It lasted four whole years.

      We literally bumped into Harold Washington and his security detail as we entered City Hall for a Saturday-morning civil ceremony. Wanted to take a picture with him, but I also didn't want to bother him. I will always regret that timidity. Less than three months later, I was waiting in line to file past his casket.

      Regarding Wrigley, I'm so old that I remember paying a buck for a bleacher ticket in '69, and I bitched loudly when the cost reached an outrageous four bucks. The Wrigley I knew and loved is a distant, receding memory that grows more faint every year. I even tried to profit from those escalating ticket prices, and briefly became a scalper in '84. That ended after the plainclothesmen snapped the cuffs on my wrists and hauled me off to a cell at the old Town Hall station.

      You want honest, you got it. You asked... I told.

      Delete
  3. "...a method of my wife's I call 'The Thinking Trick.' ... reflect upon the missing item, and calmly muse over where it was you last had it."

    My wife, also a genius, becomes a bit frustrated as I occasionally thoughtlessly and stupidly pursue strategy #1, despite having been instructed about and convinced of the effectiveness of strategy #2. Particularly as I spend the usual amount of time looking "in places it couldn’t possibly be!" ; )

    ReplyDelete
  4. I've never misplaced my keys, but these days, I lay my glasses down to read something (being nearsighted, which means I can see things very well right under my nose and not much at all past it) and often forget where I've put them. Neither method ever works for me because the glasses are always found "in places they couldn't possibly be."

    john

    ReplyDelete
  5. Miss Dickenson reported, in her odd way, the loss of a jewel, the circumstances mysterious under which it was lost and what it was that remained.

    "I held a jewel in my fingers
    And went to sleep.
    The day was warm and winds were prosy.
    I said "T' will keep.

    I woke and chid my honest fingers --
    The gem was gone.
    And now an amethyst remembrance
    Is all I own."

    Hope the lady gets her property back.

    Tom

    ReplyDelete

Comments are moderated, and posted at the discretion of the proprietor.