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Show Locker Business Poses Problems Mystery Shrouds Many Abandoned Articles NEW YORK Frederick G. Smith doesn't like mysteries, especially iL-hnn hv'ri (vrflnnpH In narlfflffpc In two big, shelf-lined rooms off Times Square, he has hundreds of mysteries to solve. Each of them is from a public locker. He is district manager of the firm which operates thousands of the dime-in-a-slot parcel bins in New York's railroad, bus and subway sub-way stations. Just how many are in use is a trade secret. Nationally, public lockers garner an estimated 40 million dimes a year. At first Smith worried about boxes of bones that turned up in the bins. Now he knows that the little skulls and skeletons do not mean murder. Usually they are cat bones, which he dutifully returns re-turns to universities from which they were borrowed by absent-minded absent-minded students. Police, secret service men and FBI agents frequently call on him for information. "We help as much as we can, but we never give tips to the police," he emphasized. "If we did. we might as well sign the death warrants of people who work for us." About 5,000 locks are changed every day. If a locker isn't emptied after 24 hours of use, its contents are removed, the bin is sealed for three days, and the lock is changed before it is put back into service Locks are switched from railroad to subway to bus stations, then out of the district. One conspicuous unclaimed item is a typewriter with an extra-large carriage. Smith called the maker of the machine, and learned who bought it by tracing the serial number. The typewriter had been traded in, and there the trail grew cold In almost a year, no one has claimed it. With other forgotten packages, it will be auctioned off at the end of 12 months Almost any day you can find at least a half dozen forgotten portable port-able radios in the storeroom. There are clothes racks lined with apparel ap-parel of every description End of the straw hat seaon brings an avalanche of men's summer skimmers. |
