On a recent Sunday, I parked next to the grounds of the Danville Museum, as I usually do, and walked along the white picket fence surrounding that museum to a point where I crossed the road and entered Danville’s First Presbyterian Church, to which I belong, and sing in the choir.

Standing out against the row of white slats of the picket fence was a black glove atop one of those slats. It had been pulled down onto the pointed tip of the slat in much the same fashion as a glove is pulled over human fingers and wrist.

I believe I could tell, just from looking at it, that none of the glove’s formerly absorbed human warmth remained, unlike the often-encountered lingering warmth in the handle of a freshly re-used grocery basket.

With its fingers pointed skyward, the glove resembled some sort of modern art on display in a public place where a passerby would notice. Even just a simple finger (real or glove) can resemble a work of modern art (not so for just the forearm or the elbow).

And just so you’ll know, the phrases: “Just a helping hand along the way” and “A friendly hi” occurred to me.

And speaking of artwork, one of my first astronomy books as a youth was the New Handbook of the Heavens. On its cover was a pallid hand holding a cube upwards in the same manner as the genteel person holds a cup of tea. Upon that cube were inscribed several constellations, their member stars connected by lines. The background of the cover artwork depicted “the blackness of space.”

But of course, I realized that the glove’s placement on that white fence slat was more of a utilitarian than artistic nature.

Someone had found a lost glove of an exerciser, dog walker, or church goer; and that finder, instead of deciding to leave the glove with the office staff of First Presbyterian or the Danville Museum, had been “more to the point,” affixing it to something in the immediate vicinity where it had been lost and could be seen in plain sight by the one who had lost it.

But, to have every-other-several-feet-or-so of public space set aside as a possible “lost and found” receptacle would probably be breaking some city law (at least, the garbage man wouldn’t like it).

I thought about the instant I looked up and first saw that glove. If I hadn’t looked up then, I wouldn’t have seen it! Being an old man “goin’ on 73” with replaced hips, a fraction of my walking time is spent in looking foot-ward; and a fraction of my walking time is spent looking forward.

Some other old men just look straight down all the time they are walking; so, they would probably have missed the glove (but not in the same way the glove’s owner had “missed” it).

The same goes for a lot of young people whose downward glance leads, not to the sidewalk or to their feet, but to a hard plastic (destruction proof) “communication rectangle” ranging from 5-plus inches in length by 3-plus inches in width (mine is smaller; it “flips”).

So, maybe it’s not so simple in the placing something lost, in order for it be found again.

Perhaps certain qualifiers are involved.

Leading to the asking of an elusively simple question:

Just in what direction is “in plain sight?”