Pete's Log: Little Mysteries

Entry #2181, (Random Crap)
(posted when I was 44 years old.)

A few months ago, for unclear reasons, I pulled a couple artifacts from somewhere and left them out on my desk.

Reverse of a business card that reads "I wasted 80 years in the numb Midwest! (having been misled by Lutheran clergy, who had been misled by their tradition). Then I moved to Washington to proclaim liberation-but the capable people that I found were addicted by their way of life. Catastrophe hovers! Who has the power to counteract what the technological revolution and media have done to us?! (while we were betrayed by the clergy!)"Laminated four-leaf clover

The "numb Midwest" rant is printed on the back of a business card. The front has a man's name, address and phone number in Washington, DC. I must have acquired it while I lived in Maryland. He doesn't have much of an internet presence, but it appears he was born in 1917. If he's still with us, he'd be 105ish.

The four leaf clover is laminated to a piece of paper that says "♣️ GOOD LUCK ♣️" with an unfamiliar name and address. Searching for it brings up an obituary for the 4 Leaf Clover Lady, who died in 2016 aged 100.

I don't recall the circumstances of where I got either item, but I am intrigued that the originators of both were born within a year or so of each other. I am pretty sure, though, that both items got carried around in a wallet at some point in time.

In the top right drawer of my desk are two old wallets:

Two full wallets, one made of duct tape and one made of leather or a similar material

On the left is the duct tape wallet I made while at Notre Dame. On the right is the wallet I bought in Germany when my new Belgian ID proved too large for the one I was using. Both wallets are stuffed with artifacts.

But I'm not positive which, if either, of these wallets those two artifacts may have come from. Also left out on my desk are my Colorado Driver License that expired in 1996 and a 1995-96 Season Pass to the Crested Butte Nordic Council. Neither of those are likely to have come from either of those wallets. I was going through some old boxes a few months ago, so maybe that's where everything came from. Or maybe these things all came from different places. Maybe I should have done something with them when I first laid them on my desk instead of waiting a few months.

This evening, while finally researching these artifacts a little further, I dug around in the duct tape wallet a little more and found this strip of paper in a secret pocket:

Old strip of paper with two call numbers written on it: "KF 9223.Z9B35" and "PE 1599.F83 F2 1995"

Those look like library catalog numbers, but I have no recollection of why I stashed them away. I could not get Google or WorldCat.org or the Library of Congress to reveal the secrets of these numbers. Jamie suggested I should check the ND library catalog. The search at library.nd.edu came up blank, but then I found a link from there to the classic catalog and using the "Call Number begins with..." search option there, I found them!

What we have is:

I can't recall having read either book. Nor do I have any idea what, if anything, they have to do with each other.

I'll admit, though: it was pretty thrilling to at least solve the mystery of what books those call numbers were for.