Found: one pair of men's sneakers. Converse. Basketball style. Blue and white with laces gone. Otherwise, like new. Previous owner unknown.
Much I marveled over the sneakers on the sidewalk. They appeared sometime in the early evening, a couple hours after the sun went down. They looked to be men's sneakers of average size. One was laying on its side. The other sat
upright as if keeping watch over its mate.
It was Park Street on a dull Tuesday night. I stepped out onto the sidewalk and glanced up and down the street. Quiet. Not a creature was stirring. Then I noticed the sneakers alone on the sidewalk. They had not been there a half hour earlier.
A curiosity. A riddle. An enigma.
My imagination gets away from me sometimes. Already I was dreaming up possibilities for the origin of the sneakers. Ever hear of someone who was startled so badly, he jumped right out of his shoes? Maybe that happened here. But there was no shocked looking fellow quivering nearby. The theory
did not work.
I approached the footware cautiously, careful not to sully any clues that might be laying around. I began to take a cursory inventory of the elements around me. There was no car parked nearby these treads might have fallen from. There was no gym bag dangling from a parking meter. There were no other clothes strewn across the street. So much for the theory of a spontaneous streaking.  I proceeded. I bent to observe the sneakers more closely. I produced a pencil and poked at them. The first thing I wanted to ascertain was whether or not there was still a foot lodged inside one of the sneakers. There was not. That eliminated a lot of possibilities right there.
I deliberated sticking my hand inside one of the shoes to see if it was still warm and quickly decided against the idea. There might be something foul in there. Or I could get my hand stuck and I'd look ridiculous walking around with dangling from my wrists.
But the mystery held me fast. Alone in the dark with this phantom footware, I could feel my thoughts turning strange. Had some jogger been vaporized through some rare and unknown chemical process? Had the owner of the sneakers somehow floated up out of them, inexplicably and tragically freed from the bounds of gravity? Maybe the sneaker man got ahold of some bad karma and got transformed into a bug.

Clearly this was too big for me to handle alone. I went into the newsroom and sought the advice of a shrewd reporter with a knack for deductive reasoning. He joined me on Park Street and examined the evidence. He stroked his chin and quickly laid out several possible scenarios. It was simple, he said. A teen who had been playing basketball with his buddies brakes a lace while untying his sneakers. Realizing he's running late and should be home by now, he hurriedly tosses the sneakers in the back of a buddies car. But the car is full of junk -- pizza boxes, CDs, skis, magazines and smelly books -- and the sneakers simply tumble back to the street unnoticed. The next guy to come walking down the street kicks the sneakers to the sidewalk and voila! A small chain of events enough to beguile only the most twisted reporter.

My friend thinks like Sherlock Holmes. I think like Calvin and Hobbes. It's all a matter of perspective. And anyway, there was no proof on either side. A hurried teen may very well have been responsible for the phantom footware. But how could we know there wasn't some hapless soul drifting far above the earth, barefoot and screaming for gravity?

The city, like any other place, is full of mysteries. One man's litter is another man's marvel. A mundane item one person will step across without thought will engage another in rich ruminations.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter. Copyright ©2003 Lewiston Sun Journal.