By BOB HIGH
Staff writer

I was having lunch Tuesday when my cell phone began its jazzy tone announcing someone wanted to talk to me.

Surprise! Surprise! The caller announced his name and ended the puzzle of the wallet found on Dec. 8 at an I-40 exit ramp in western Haywood County near the Pigeon River gorge.

“I’m sorry it took so long, but when I got your number they gave me some wrong numbers, and I had to wait until the sheriff’s office reopened this week to get the correct numbers,” the caller said.

The wallet owner told how he had pulled off I-40 at the Fines Creek exit to clean his pickup truck’s windshield. “I was getting road grime from the slush and melting ice and snow. My windshield washer unit had frozen, and I couldn’t see,” the man said.

I exclaimed to him that’s the same reason we (my wife, Lacy Wilson and his wife Judy) stopped that Friday morning.

“I had taken my wallet out of my pants and put it on the seat because I was going to work and I wanted to make sure I put it in my coat before I put on my work clothes. It must have fallen out from the seat when I got out,” the 52-year-old resident of Canton noted.

He said he soon missed his wallet and retraced his trip. “Were you in a white vehicle? I saw one leaving the exit about the time I got back there.”

“Nope, I was in a light brown van, and I drove back to Waynesville where I tried to get the sheriff’s office to pick it up from me, but I didn’t get any cooperation,” I answered.

“I heard something about the sheriff’s department up here. I’m not real sure what all happened.”

“Well, I promise you a bunch of stuff happened. I’ll include the Dec. 25 story in our newspaper here, and you’ll understand more of what went on,” I replied.

The wallet owner is in the landscaping business and was constructing a private residential road that day.

He’s tickled to get his wallet back and asked for me to remove some of the cash to pay for my “trouble” and the postage.

I told him there wasn’t enough money to pay for the “trouble,” and my “reward” was getting to write the unusual story.