May Daze

Let’s cut right to it.

On Thursday, I couldn’t type fast enough (dayjob) for I knew that at 6 p.m. I’d be heading over to the west side of town for some fun with my girlfriends, one of whom had been feeling a bit pooky lately due to some boy-related heart strain. (The heart, she reminds us, is a muscle and does not break – but it does hurt when strained).

As all good girlfriends know, the proven balm for heart strain is:

A balmy Thursday evening, beer, lawn chairs on the driveway, chips, guac, goat cheese, nuts, a couple of Tesoro metal detectors and the landlady’s permission to hunt the large, virgin yard of an old house that backs up to the railroad tracks.

Everyone was there when I arrived and after 30 minutes of chowing and yapping, we got down to business. I took the DeLeon and got MJ started on the tried and true Cibola. She wasted no time in pulling out this.

Nice job, kiddo! There was some dancing about with excitement.

It’s an American Signature brand sterling child’s fork. Probably 1940s…

Realizing that I was not dealing with amateurs, I decided not to rein in my extraordinary expertise. So I pulled out this:

Forget the gun, check out them gams!

It’s a starter pistol. I wonder what it started…

It cleaned up nice too. Barrel still turns.

Dude, your starting days are finished.

Kim and Kathy joined in and soon there was a major excavation going on: a really deep hole yielded … a lovely piece of wire.

In the MD world, wire can really mess up your head. It’s like, everywhere at the same time and it’s so thoroughly disappointing when you pull it out. You can’t even put a positive spin on it. (“Oh, wire! I can use it as a whisk!” or “Oh good, I can fashion a coat hanger!” or the ubiquitous response: “Oh! Art project!” Really, none of them applies to wretched wire.)

In another part of the yard, I pulled out a weird, lumpy clump and decided to just clean it up later.  Well, I should have taken it a bit more seriously because here’s what it looks like cleaned up:

Back of once valuable brooch. Sigh.

Front of once valuable brooch

Tarnation. I’m sure the diamonds and rubies that once encrusted it are still slumbering peacefully in the hole. Which hole would that be? I have no idea. I fill all my holes with surgical precision.

Found these two bullets in the same hole. I’ll have to wait until the next Middle Tennessee Metal Detecting Club meeting to look in the big bullet book and figure out what these are. They don’t look Civil War to me, but I’ve been wrong before. Any suggestions?

Soon it was too dark to dig. My now fully indoctrinated girlfriends were thrilled with their grand total of 26 cents and various pieces of trash. We repaired to the dining room where MJ’s newly polished sterling silver baby fork was used to polish off a bowl of spaghetti with marinara sauce. Then we played Dominos until the wee hours. Altogether, a fine evening of estrogen and sonic waves.

Well, I didn't want to be stingy with this very nice, flat, mowed, permission-granted yard and so returned with Cheryl two days later. We had a fine time. Enjoyed a cleansing rainstorm. Behold the riches:

This...

was about six inches from this.

Cheryl dug something really cool, but not yet identified. When she sends me a photo, I will post it.

Sunday, Cheryl and I met Doug at a construction site in Murfreesboro. It was too hot to be out there long and there was just so much trash it was tough going, but I found a nice harmonica reed just lying on the ground.

Before I knew better, I threw out a bunch of these
things thinking they'd fallen off of a lawn mower.
I am not sure how I came to this conclusion, having
no knowledge of lawn mower mechanics. But no,
this is a harmonica reed and they are EVERYWHERE
in the ground in Tennessee, left behind by
thousands of young soldiers who passed the hours
delivering sweet and mournful songs into the woods
that would one day be Music City.

Also found this:

I love license plates. They festoon my kitchen.

And so, dear reader, that was the weekend.  Nothing earth-shattering but lots of fun. Gearing up for my trip to the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas where I am a finalist in the New Folk Songwriting competition. You’d think I’d be practicing, but no, I’m trying to figure out if I should pack a machine….