Honor lost and found in a field of dreams.

Byline: Dave Kayfes For The Register-Guard

It's my "Field of Dreams" - that patch of four different plantings of u-pick corn with the "honor system" jar in front of the nearby farmhouse. A throwback to when I was a kid in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1940s and 1950s.

I remember picking corn from a field in the country; they had a jar and a sign for a suggested donation - 12 for $1.

We seldom locked the doors back then, and I don't recall my parents ever talking about a fear of theft or vandalism. I think back on it as a time of childhood innocence and purity. Or perhaps it's an exaggerated, wishful fantasy of a guy nostalgic for the way some things used to be.

I feel like I can go back to that time now, when I take a 10-minute drive from my house to a special field in another country setting in another time.

The past called on a Saturday last month; I decided to pick nine ears of corn before filling the car with gas and picking up a few groceries. The patch that was planted first was being plowed under already; a sign indicated that the second patch was "mature," and another sign said the third was "tender."

I always have preferred the young tender ears, and had little trouble finding nine full ears with dried silk tassels.

I knelt by the jar and noticed it had a wad of cash on the bottom; I had two $1 bills and one $100 bill in my wallet; I put $1 in the jar and fished in the coin pocket of my fanny pack for 50 cents.

I stopped at the grocery store to buy a few items and break the $100 bill, but when I got to the checkstand, my wallet was not in my fanny pack.

After a moment of shock and panic, I realized what I had done: I had left the wallet by the jar in front of the farmhouse. I drove back to the field; the jar had only $2 in it and there was no wallet.

I knocked at the farmhouse door; no answer.

I tried to talk myself into not going into another panic as I drove to an adjoining farmhouse. They called the farmer, but no one answered; they called their cell phone, still no answer; they gave me their phone number and I drove home.

I had a faint hope that someone might have called while I was gone, but no such luck.

I didn't think I could wait any longer for the farmer, so I called my credit card company. I told them what had happened and they looked at my account.

"Your last purchase was for $45 at a Springfield discount store Aug. 23," the woman said.

"Oh, no, that's today and I didn't use the card," I said. "Someone's got the card and is using it."

I asked them to close my account and they connected me to the fraud department. The guy on the other end of the phone told me I shouldn't pay attention to my next bill and they would credit me the $45 for the fraudulent purchase.

"That's nice," I thought.

Next, I called 911 to report a credit card thief on the loose in Springfield. They put me on hold, but I couldn't think of anything more pressing for the police to be doing than to be looking for the thief with my wallet.

The operator told me they would send me a crime report by mail and I could fill it out. I told her that the thief was using my credit cards and there must be a way of notifying stores to stop him.

"Nothing in the system to do that, sir," I was told. Back to canceling ATM and other credit cards.

The more I thought about replacing my driver's license, Social Security card, library card and insurance cards, the more I thought, too, about the desecration of the farm's honor system.

"Of all places to have my wallet stolen," I thought. "Nothing is safe, even in that sacred place."

At 9:30, the farmer's wife called. She had received my phone messages and wanted to catch me before I went to bed. She had my wallet, complete with credit cards and $100 bill.

"How do you explain the $45 charge taken against the card at a Springfield discount store when I hadn't used the card?" I asked.

The woman didn't have an answer. But my wife did.

"Uh, oh," she said. "I used my card to buy a wedding gift at Target in Springfield. I didn't think of Target as a discount store."

Mystery solved - and, more important, the "honor" of my favorite place was saved.

Dave Kayfes is retired and lives in Eugene. He is a former sports reporter for The Register-Guard.

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