LA Times

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Class Act

The smokeout at Daniel Arthurs got my mug shot on the front page of the Gazette. Todd Sabin saw my picture and that jogged his memory about something he had found a few years back.


It all sort of went down something like this:

The day after the picture appeared, my phone rang and a gentleman identified himself as Todd Sabin. He said I may or may not know him, but that we had mutual friends and he had something of mine that he thought I would want back. My curiosity was peaked but he would not give me any hints. Instead he suggested that the next time I was to venture to CR (thats what the locals call Cedar Rapids) that we should meet and he would have a 5 minute story to tell me and then cough up the goods.

A few days later a meeting was arranged and he proceeds to tell me that he had worked for Richard Pinney, the now deceased Cedar Rapids artist and he thought that I had commissioned him to do a personal sculpture. I acknowledged that was in fact correct and almost immediately I said "my class ring" and he reached into his pocket and produced the little gem.

You see it was all part of the "junkue" that was submitted to Pinney so that he could configure a collection of my life up the that date. I suspect based on the used ticket stub for a Kreskin appearance that it was the very late 70s or early 80s.

Obviously my class ring had not made the cut for the piece of art. What did make it though were items like an Amana beer can, unpaid parking tickets most likely issued at my personal parking space at the Flame Room, frown buttons and ironically a cigar. Obviously, Mr. Pinney did not return the ring when he returned the rest of the rejected media. I remember at the time, thinking that I had given him the class ring, but was not sure. For the next 29 years I have not thought about it.

Enter Todd Sabin who was hired to do some demolition work at the old Pinney residence after his death. Todd tells of running a bobcat clearing the area where once the Pinney studio had been and seeing a shiny article in the dirt. He gets off the machine and sees its a ring. He sees the initials B E and Amana and 1966 and he deduces that its mine.

What are the odds? Anyone want to go steady?