Anyway, I had to make a quick change of plans, and I went to my fallback plan, that never fails and flew to Afton for breakfast. 60 miles aways or so and lots of places to play along the way, and the cafe a few minutes walk from my parking place right near the Husky plant. Good food and reasonably priced. So, fed, and walking back, maybe 300' down and across the highway from the cafe, a SUV drives by towing a enclosed trailer, and as it does, I hear something hit the pavement. It is a box, a package of some sort, something new judging from the way it is enclosed, some "thing" that these people just passing by must have put on the roof or someplace and forgot about it and it slid off as they gained speed.
Now, the first thing I do is look both ways on the highway, no vehicles in site, and the SUV is pulling and parking at the cafe, obviously oblivious to their loss. So yeah... for a second I thought " I could pick this up (whatever "it" was), it's mine now, no one will ever know, screw 'em". But of course that thought passed and I moved on to getting to be hero and returning it to the family that was piling out of the SUV, obviously going to breakfast. So, I walk out in the lane and pick up the upside down box, it was heavy, and felt like something worth some dough. I turn it over, and......and you should know I have a guy working for me who has a real one so I know what they look like, it was a full size high quality reproduction of a THOMPSON SUB MACHINE GUN!
Now this day was sort of screwed up, until now, finding this in the road made the day, no matter what my earlier plans were. I start hoofing it back to the cafe, trying to get to the people before they made it into the cafe. They were still milling around outside, and as I approached them I said "anyone lose a Tommygun?" Man it was priceless, the look on the guys face, and then his wife came right over and shook my hand. They had put it on the trailer fender and spaced out when they drove off, I got that much info and the fact they were from Utah. Good deed done for the day, I walked off. The only thing I regret is not telling them I flew in, and was walking the short distance back towards my plane. They probably thought I was a homeless guy or hitchhiker, I mean who walks anywhere? It would have been, in a very small twisted way, a good thing for sport aviation, "Lose your machine gun replica, and hope a pilot finds it"
Then the usual hijinks on the flight back, 3 new sites.
