Still hoping
Using Disk Utility (Ctrl-R, suggested by OnyX, I have now verified and repaired where necessary all of my disks--external, HD, two iPods (why not), and ... except for Backup, which cannot be fixed. So I have no backup, but at least I know.
I than ran the permissions maintenance while I did other things (took a while), and it found many differing permissions. Not clear if the "should be's" and the "are's" are left as they were found, or if everything now agrees. Surely I'd need to provide some input?
Anyway, I think OnyX suggested I do this. Wish I'd kept notes, but wanted to ensure the indexing encountered no obstacles. If it is still indexing, I have no way of knowing. But I cannot find anything, still. Trying to get a resume together and looking for certain scanned documents, I am out of luck.
Manual search is next. Thanks for the help.