Fifty Words, Weather, Words

A Pocketful of?

82 Comments

Spring is the time to clean out winter jacket pockets.  Much
accumulates there in a few short months.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in
my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great
epics is past.
— Gilbert Chesterton

What’s in your pockets?  What would you like to find there?

82 thoughts on “A Pocketful of?”

  1. We arrived home yesterday from our trip to Tacoma. I am finding small screws and other hardware left over from assembling IKEA furniture for our daughter.

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    1. left over screws is not a great sign of furniture assembly success. you must now live in peril wondering when the legs will fall of your daughters dining room table or the chair she is reclining will collapse and find her unconscious alone in the tecoma rental abyss

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  2. Except for gloves in winter coats I almost never have anything in my pockets – I don’t like stuff getting squashed. But if I could have Mary Poppins pockets I would always have a few dog treats, quarters for kids’ lemonade stands, pennies for wishing wells and chocolates (for me).

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      1. I have the same rule. Last week the kids up the street had a stand – Lyndale is a hard street for retail, so I paid a dollar for my 25 cent lemonade. They had fresh berries to add to the lemonade as well. A bargain!

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  3. For years, when we had dogs, my pockets would always have dog treats and plastic bags in them, but now they hold only gloves and crumpled receipts. More interesting anr the things I’ve found in books over the years.

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    1. My wasband had an informal savings plan – every now and then he would stick a $20 bill in our copy of Das Capital (yes we thought we were funny). Then time went by, we had troubles, eventually got divorced and forgot about the little stash. I got most of the books in the split so imagine my surprise when a couple of years later I stumbled on the money – about $200!

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      1. Regrettably, I haven’t come upon any naked cash in my books. I’m curious though, did you have Das Capital solely for a witty bank or for the gripping prose?

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        1. Wasband was an economics major – since I haven’t read it, the copy must have been his from school. He wasn’t a big reader so that’s why I ended up with almost all the books.

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    2. In an 1850 copy of N. P. Willis’ poetry, I found a pristine program for the dedication, in about 1855, of the Second Unitarian Church of Worcester, Mass. The featured speaker was Edward Everett Hale. I contacted the church and sent it to them.

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      2. Tucked inside a book about Lincoln I found a copy of “The Sylvan Cabin, an ode commemorating the centenary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln”, by Edward Smyth Jones, an African American poet. The pamphlet-sized publication was produced by the author especially for the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1915.
        I contacted a woman who was assembling a collection of artifacts from the exposition for a book she was preparing. She didn’t have a copy, so I sent her mine.

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      3. I have the handwritten text for a talk on temperence (moral suasion! That’s the ticket!) that was inserted in a book on famous orations.

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    3. There is a book called Handwritten Recipes, which is a collection of recipes that someone who worked in a used bookstore culled from the books people sold to the store. The recipes were usually written on index cards and used as bookmarks. The book shows each recipe as shown on the card, along with the title of the book is was found in. Interesting reading.

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  4. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    My pockets, in any garment, are stuffed full of kleenex. My allergies require constant tending, so it is a risk to venture out without one. Coins, dollar bills, keys, and occasionally a misplaced credit card also reside in my pockets.

    What a delightful post! Thanks Linda.

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  5. Plastic bags (for when I’m walking Bernie – who has been promoted from Bernie the underdog to Bernie the wunderdog), and an assortment of lip balm. Occasionally, I’ll find a shopping list, a crushed receipt or a dollar bill or two.

    I remember as a kid losing my glasses. Don’t know how much I needed them as I was without them for half a year without mom bothering to replace them. They surfaced in fall in the pocket of my trench coat which I hadn’t worn all summer.

    Nice post, Linda.

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      1. In restaurants that don’t have menus with reasonably large type, the servers should carry extra pairs of reading glasses to hand out to the diners. They would get big tips.

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  6. i started wearing sports coats at age 16. they hold stuff. the inside pockets hold wallets pens notes checkbooks in the side pockets headphones computer cables coins are regular finds which leaves rooom for my keys in the pants pocket and my phone in my breast pocket. ladies have a purse, i have my sports coat. at night i have a bowl i transfer the goods to in anticipation of a switch new garment in the morning. on occasion i find a jacket that was stored with a wad of bills int he pocket. its always a smile to find a 20 or a wad with change form a 20 in the pocket.

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  7. Nothing not yet mentioned – Kleenex, because you just never know. In jackets, Chapstik and Kleenex. If I go out to, say, a party, and what I wear HAS pockets, then lipstick may show up in them.

    I have long had a pet peeve with women’s clothes designers that leave pockets out of women’s pants. You would never find men’s pants without a pocket (except maybe those biking shorts).

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  8. I’m a firm believer in pockets….great place for hands.

    As has been shared…Kleenex is usually in my pockets…most often sweatshirt pockets which get washed and dried producing small kleenix bits on all of that load. Pet peeve of husband. Reading glasses often found in same pockets…but recently lost….only to find in the washing machine rubblerr door liner. Lucky me…they weren’t scratched….happy me to have located them.

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        1. yep thanks
          i knew it was familiar i paly that version. ithat verse is on the paul simon live not the studio recording

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  10. During a short stint teaching pre-school in New York, I read the group a picture book Peter’s Pocket (by Judi Barrett), about a little boy whose mother made him a pocket to pin on his clothes when he had none. Then they were to sew their own pocket from the fabric I’d prepared. I could have used a couple of aides on that one – somehow I thought that would be easier for 4-year-olds than it was.

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  12. If the question is what is in my pants pockets, the answer is nothing. Long ago I carried a wallet and coins, but I can’t remember the last time I paid for anything with cash. In my jacket pockets: the wallet with all my cards and licenses, my keys and the garage door remote.

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    1. Remember when pocket change included half dollars and even the occasional silver dollar? The lifespan of pockets must have been short.

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      1. nah you spent it
        today you hand out a 20 and get more change back
        back in the day a loaf of bread a pack of cigs a bottle of pop… everything could be paid for with sc50 cent piece not today

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        2. yep 1966 or 7? i think they were either 30 or 35 when i started smoking about that time. i swore if they ever hit 50 i”d quit. 30 years and 365xe3 packs a day x30 years x20 cigs per pack = 875,000 cigs later i quit. they were $3.00 a pack and a $10 a day habbit. no wonder i hacked up that cough phlem. 875,000 smokes will do that to you.

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      2. While in college, I worked one summer for my hometown dry cleaner doing deliveries, alterations, and repairs. I repaired many a pocket hole made by said change.

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  13. A retired local dentist in our town wrote a children’s book “My Mother’s Apron” about growing up on a farm in ND during the Depression and all the things his mother kept in her apron pockets. I believe he mentions kittens in the pockets as well as all the other things a farm wife would need to carry around.

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  14. Upon reading the title the first thing I thought of was the movie ‘Pocketful of Miracles’. One of my favorites. (Edward Everett Horton is in the cast. For a minute I thought of him as I read billinmpls’ mention of Edward Everett Hale).

    Mostly just gloves in my coat pockets. I do have a ziplock bag w/ some root beer hard candies in my coat; I’m saving them to get a surprise in the fall when I find them again.

    When my father in law died, as we cleaned out his closet, he had lots of Sunday suits. It appeared he gained weight and out-grew them yearly. In each coat, a pocket held a church bulletin, a pen, and an open pack of certs.
    Vaguely related: both he and his wife were pretty good bowlers. In the bottom of his ball bag was a bottle of Jack Danial’s. In the bottom of her bag was the rule book. Pretty well summed up their personalities!

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      1. I don’t need to put my mittens in the pockets. It’s much easier keeping track of both of them by having them anchored to a string pulled through the sleeves.

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        1. In kindergarten and first grade, those strings were common. Or they had mitten clamps, too, that attached mittens to sleeves. Kids older than first or second grade were too proud to wear such things.

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  15. The second question was, What would you like to find in your pockets? If you had Mary Poppins pockets (thanks for that, VS).

    I’d like to find some missing things. Once one of the lenses fell out of a pair of prescription glasses, and I wrapped it in a napkin and put it in a pocket for safekeeping. I never found it again, though, so I still have a perfectly good pair of glasses with only one lens. I keep thinking the other will show up at some point.

    Everyone always likes to find forgotten money. But maybe you could also find a surprising artifact from a relative who has since passed on, or a key and a treasure map, or a note from a loved one, or a teeny MP3 player with all sorts of wonderful songs on it. It all depends on the pocket, I suppose.

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    1. It’s not exactly a pocket, but I’ve had a safe deposit box at what was once Norwest Bank and has since become Wells Fargo for a long, long time. I have no recollection whatsoever of what I have in that box. I should make a trip to Minneapolis one of these days to find out.

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      1. Birth certificate? Immigration papers? Abstract from the house?

        I would find out. If it turns out it’s nothing important, you could stop spending the money on the safe deposit box, and have some extra cash to go out to eat, or donate to a favorite charity, every month.

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        1. I really should go check it out, but not because of the box rental as I don’t pay for it. If I can’t locate the key, however, it’s going to cost me $250.00 to open the box.

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    2. Maybe it could be a note found in a forgotten pocket of a deceased close relative. Something you could write a whole story about. Something intriguing and mysterious like “It’s all been a lie” or “I hid all the good stuff”.

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  16. on a note in the pocket of a sports coat purchased at goodwill i would like to find the true meaning of life, i have more fun asking that question when i am out in life… pestle are always asking me if there is any question they can answe for me so i ask them the true meaning of life. i get some good answers and a lot of smiles after i get to watch the cogs turn processing the meaning of the words that just went from my mouth to their ear. the true meaning of life has got to be out there somewhere… ill keep checking sports coat pockets from good will

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        1. i am a little fragmented these days
          my spellchecking snafoos or lack there of leave me doubletaking my own write ups and then i shake my head and leave it for you guys to figure out. the pessel was a typo and it reminded me of the scene you found. thanks for figuring it out

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        2. No figuring required. I knew instantly were it was from. I’m a huge Danny Kaye fan.

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    2. FM makes me stub my toes. Psoriatic arthritis makes my to nails brittle and easily pulled loose. Stubbed my toe yesterday morning. An hour later I walked out into the main room and saw blood all over the carpet. Looked. Toe nail hanging at the bottom. Blood filled sock. Did not feel a thing. Changed socks and cleaned up the blood on the carpet and hard floors. Tried to pull toe nail off. Could not quite manage it. So later went into urgent care with fourth sock of day. They numbed the toe and pulled it off and another piece. Wrapped it. I came home with sock in pocket. Still cannot feel any pain there. Probably masked by all the other pain in my body.

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  18. When my daughter was a toddler I had a shirt with a tiny pocket sewed on one shoulder. It had a button closure. Somehow I decided to hide a little bit of candy in that pocket. When we were together one day I told my daughter that I could feel an odd lump in that wee pocket. I asked her to check it out. After that, whenever I wore that shirt I tried to remember to put some little treat in there and button it closed so my daughter could experience the thrill of discovering it.

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  19. Ha! Just emptied a pocket of this jacket that I wear infrequently, and found a couple of “regulars” I’d forgotten about – used hearing aid batteries picked up from my mom’s dresser, that I will recycle; and a couple of pennies found on the street.

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  21. Sandy often finds money in coat pockets and purse compartments. Sometimes a 20. I never carry money so no chance for me to even hope to find money.

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  23. Last week a rather unique button popped off my jacket as I rode my bike down an alley. I knew pretty close to where it was, so I determined to come back that way and hopefully retrieve it. I was elated to find the button later as planned, and put it in the nice deep jacket pocket. Then I forgot about it, and in the course of the next few days I used that jacket several times, tossed it around in the car, etc., and have now lost the button. So my wish would be to have the button reappear in that pocket.

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  24. did you see the guy who dropped off clothes with gooddwill or once upon a child with 5000 dollars worth of little bags of marijuana in the pockets of a coat he donated? made the channel 4 news this morning.

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  25. The last few years, at our family Christmas, we sneak treats into everyone’s coat pockets.
    It started at our house when we got a bunch of little candy canes and didn’t want them so we ‘gave’ them all away.
    That was so much fun we did it again the next year with some other treat.
    So far, no one has said anything…

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