The mystery shirt

I was drying laundry the other day, which consists of hanging shirts from a shirt rack Don made me, and hanging the rest of the laundry on a drying rack.

One shirt in particular has become one of Don's favorites. It's his dress shirt, and he'll often wear it to church or other nicer occasions. This shirt is of a far higher quality than Don normally buys (especially since we always shop in thrift stores).

"I wonder what the story is behind this shirt," I remarked as I hung it to dry.

That's because this shirt didn't come from a thrift store. It was found in a parking lot during our second honeymoon last year.

To recap, on the fifth day of our second honeymoon trip, we were on our way to Zion National Park when we impulsively pulled over at a tourist attraction called "Fort Zion."

Clearly it was meant for children, since it had all kinds of campy attractions.

The facility was closed at the time we passed through (it was fairly early in the day), but we walked around the outside and noted some of the amenities. Along one edge of the parking lot, I photographed this lethal row of prickly pear cacti.

It was here, in the empty parking lot by the row of cacti, that Don found a crumpled shirt on the ground. I don't know why he picked it up, but the moment he did, he recognized the quality. "I'm taking this home," he said, and stuffed the shirt somewhere into the car.

After our trip ended and we were doing the mountains of laundry that tends to accumulate on such trips, he washed the shirt and it became part of his regular repertoire of clothing.

But every so often we wonder just why such a nice shirt was left behind in the parking lot of a kiddie tourist trap outside of Zion National Park. We joke that it was a critical piece of evidence in a crime scene, and the crime remains unsolved because he picked up the shirt.

So that's the mystery shirt. Regardless of its past, it certainly is a nice dress shirt.