Actually, I am fairly sure that some of my friends and
family are judging me, or at least rolling their eyes just a wee bit. I've always been eccentric but this MD stuff, together with the current extreme length of my hair has got to be alarming. But I am
of an age and mindset when so little of that matters to me any more. With the
kids all mature and whatnot, I am free to do whatever I want, and so, within
limits, I do. If I want to spend 16 hours of every weekend “diggin’ like a
mole” (as The Aptly Named Doug once described me), then dig I shall. With long tresses. I don’t
care anymore.
That said, I judge myself. Just a tad. Maybe “judge” is too
strong a word. But I got pretty frustrated a month or so back, during a
wretched spell where I couldn’t dig a worm.
It started at the Club Hunt. We’d received permission to
return to the Blissful Meadows of Bounty (as I shall refer to them, so that
you’ll have no way to track them and pillage them further) where we hunted last
June when it was 100 degrees. Cheryl had skunked me good that day (heel plate)
and I was determined to return the favor on this gorgeous, cool, sunny day. There
were about 40 of us out there swinging away.
Oddly, in a copse of trees, I came across a “lost” sculpture
by 20th Century French cubist Georges Braque, obviously wrought
during his farm implement period.
Love it!
But I didn’t find much in the ground except for horseshoes
and assorted rusted iron crap.
Here’s my inner conversation when I realize that the signal
I’ve been digging is only going to yield a square piece of rusted iron that
possibly was once a hoe:
Me: Oh. Piss and
moan. SIGH. Maybe I should just leave
this here, rebury it…
Me: Nope. Put it in
your fanny pack and bring it home. Or throw it out.
Me: It won’t fit in the fanny pack.
Me: You can’t leave it here. How about an art project! This
would make an excellent mobile!
Me: Are you kidding me? I have no skills. OK. I’ll take it
home and put it on the volcano-sized pile of rusted iron by the back door.
Perhaps I can learn some craft techniques.
I dug nothing good that day, but soothed my disappointment
by finding some old glass insulators just sitting under some trees.
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| Yay. Insulators. |
Here are the clear winners of the day. Sadly, neither of the hands shown are mine.
Made a quick trip up to Ann Arbor for some gigs and to
celebrate my kids’ birthdays and brought along a couple of machines. Sadly, my
fallow spell continued. Some friends invited me out into the country for fun
hunt at an old school site, Peter dug part of an old practice typewriter
keyboard!
Linda dug a gorgeous, old door handle.
Score two
for the Bounty Hunter. I, however, with the pricey machine, dug part of some
old whisker clippers.
Spent a transcendent hour at County Farm Park. Expected tons
of trash, but the land was strangely “virgin” – hardly a signal, and with the tall
trees just starting to leaf out, it was like being in northern Michigan, so
peaceful, even with cars and trucks so close by.
I’d had my eye on a small park where there had once been an
old fraternity and sauntered over there one day to check it out. Here are my finds.
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| Top: Cadillac dashboard thingie that caused quite a stir on Facebook, gigantic coin, 1907 Indian head penny, green light from mower (I actually am just making that up.) |
Please take note of that gigantic coin. Do you know how excited
I was to find that? I’d been thirsting to find the fabled Large Cent but never
had found one. Could this be one??? Alas, no. When I
got it home and cleaned it off, it revealed itself to be a “Maui Trade Dollar”
– some kind of token put out by the Maui Chamber of Commerce in 1995. THANKS, rich, entitled U-M student who went to Hawaii on Spring Break and flung your Maui Trade Dollar in the dirt in some brewski-fueled rage. I was so disappointed.
There was
an Indian head penny, though, so I tried to focus on that.
Back in Nashville, my luck began to change in fits and
starts. When we moved down here, I joined Big Brothers Big Sisters and was
paired with an adorable kid named Hayley. Now she’s practically a teenager and
way cooler than me, but she still agrees to hang out with me, particularly if I
take her horseback riding.
One day I picked her up and took her out to a beautiful,
rugged, old farm. While Hayley rode with her teacher, I asked the farm owner if
I could check out his property with my detector. He said sure.
This place is really something. The original house, built in
the 1700s, burned down 100 years ago and the little Victorian farmhouse that
was built in its place is being renovated. There’s a barn, an old smokehouse,
a creek, pastures, and a fairly sizeable cemetery.
Within 30 minutes, I’d found all this and was seriously
crushing on this property that we will now call The Farm.
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| Rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham, I love this site. From top left: brass heel plate toy gun, toy sheriff badge, round saddle thing, mushroom-shaped MYSTERY item that is very old. Any ideas? |
When Terri and her partner, Frank Pahl, arrived a week or
two later, I had it all figured out. We’d shoot Saturday at The Farm, and
Sunday at another Nashville site where Cheryl and I had found four CW bullets
fairly quickly. We’ll call that site The Agency. We were SET!
Lights! Camera! Action!
Pull Tabs! Can Slaw! Foil!
Cheryl, Doug, Brenda (Doug’s wife), Terri, Frank and I
arrived at The Farm on a beautiful, cloudy Saturday morning. I mean, you could
film The Hobbit at this place. It’s that magical. Cheryl immediately pulled out
a gorgeous Winged Mercury hood ornament off an old Ford (?) but after that it
was a little disappointing, find-wise. Terri and Frank were very encouraging.
They watched us swing our machines, they came in close to see what we pulled
from the ground, they asked us what it all meant to us. They interviewed Doug
as he sat in the doorway of the old smokehouse. We had “lunch” (popcorn and Gatorade) at a gas
station, then came back for another hour or two until we were exhausted. I
tried not to be goal-oriented and to trust the process.
Sunday morning, we went over to Doug's to film him there.
Then off to The Agency and again, Mother Earth got all
shy and blushy and reticent. Didn’t dig hardly anything fun! CRAP! So we all
piled in our cars and followed Doug and Brenda to Franklin to a huge
construction site that seemed promising. Again, no kind of mother lode…
It will be interesting to see the final cut. I trust Terri to make something wondrous.
Which brings us to this weekend. Last Friday morning, I
received the sad news that my sister-in-law had died suddenly, in her home in
Muskegon. Lauren Hill was married to Al’s brother, Tony, and though they’d been
divorced for years, Lauren was still a member of the Hill family. Her kids,
Andrea and Zephyr, are two of the coolest people ever. Lauren was kind,
ebullient, strong, funny, and had a laugh that I’ll never forget. She was beside me on that day in 1997 when we all gathered around Al's dad, Donald Hill, as he took his
last breath. Lauren gave great hugs, and fun socks for Christmas presents.
Anyway, it was sobering news and by the end of my work day,
I knew I had to get away from the computer and out into nature. I drove to The
Farm for a little digging and life-pondering. I don’t know if was the absence of a film crew or the
silence of the late afternoon, or the recent rain or what, but the dirt was generous and I did a lot better.
Dug my first official Large Cent…
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| This was NOT issued by the Maui Chamber of Commerce. |
Here's a summary of my recent finds at The Farm.
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| Clockwise from top: old carpenter's level, three clumps of lead, 1962 rabies tag, four wheat pennies, I have no idea, oil lamp parts, flat button. Center from top: token, large cent (same one as above), Mercury dime. |
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| This is from Earthman's Mercantile, a long gone store in White's Creek, TN |
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| Red Goose Shoes: Half the Fun of Having Feet. |
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| Cascaret's Laxative Candy (Best for the Bowels!) See, in the '20s and '30s, people were obsessed with pooping and would give their kids laxative candy. Oh, the things you learn. |
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| Drawer pull, pocket knife, barrel spigot (I think this is very old), two beautiful buckles, round thing. We dug a lot of round things. |
The rest of the weekend delivered too. Doug, Cheryl and I returned to The Agency for another go-round. Here's my current stash from that site.
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| Heel plate, two tent eyelets, rose tag, part of watch, button face (?), floral thing that has the word "Coro" on the back, 1887 Seated Liberty dime, pretty bottle top, cool hook. |
What? You want to see that 1887 Seated Liberty dime up close? Of course you do.
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| Pretty thang... |
And this evening I hit a lawn near my house that I’ve had my
eye on for some time. A lovely family lives there and they were so welcoming.
They actually have a fascinating piece of property for reasons that I will get
into at another time. Let’s just say that humans – and maybe even pre-humans –
have been coming to that particular spot on the planet for at least 300 years.
It’s buzzing with energy and history.
I was just getting ready to go, when I got a good signal and
dug this.
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| Pompeii, anyone? |
Here it is cleaned up.
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| Soldier doing warrior pose, but not very well. |
So. Yeah. Dry spell officially over.
Love, Whit
Love, Whit
