The Ranchion and the Bank of Harmonica

Glorious: that’s the kind of spring it’s been here in Nashville. Your Dirt Girl has been busy with a slurry of pleasant and/or mundane activities. These include: 

• The Boring Dayjob (I write at home for a university medical school)
• Teaching Sticky Little Chilluns to Point Their Feet (I’m a ballet teacher.)
• Writing Songs (I think I wrote or cowrote 11 in the last month.)
• Going to Song Gatherings (Critique sessions, rounds, etc.)
• Socializing (This has become very important to me due to my delightful friends.)
• Working on my Metal Detecting Record (SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS!)
• Digging Dirt (I think you are not surprised.)

I continue to be enchanted by the strange serendipity of this endeavor – the way the finds somehow seem to have a sense of humor, a sense of irony. Is that even possible? Why does this hobby feel so connected to something … intelligent? The coincidences and oddities are so frequent that it’s hard to ignore.

For instance, remember (from a Dirt Girl post a couple of years ago) when I was working that NY Times crossword puzzle and couldn’t get the 5-letter answer for “vintage toothpaste”? I thought about it for days, and it was on the tip of my brain… and then I went into some northern Michigan woods and dug a tiny, metal toothpaste cap that read “IPANA”?

That kind of thing seems to happen a lot. And I love it.

Here’s a recap of recent finds, both ordinary and magical:

One sunny Sunday in early April, Cheryl couldn't join me so I headed out alone. First stop: a lawn near Shelby Park. It SHOULD have been a great yard – on a hill, overlooking the river and downtown – but I found nothing but bottle caps. Poked around in the park for a bit, and found this...

This is so very not gold.

then headed down Riverside Drive (a real misnomer of a street, as it does not follow any river at all). Amid all the ‘50s ranchers and more modern homes on this street, I’d noticed a really old Italianate home trying to hide behind some very high shrubbery. I’d done some research on this house; it’s one of only four surviving antebellum homes in East Nashville. Originally surrounded by hundreds of acres of land, it’s now hemmed in by suburbia on all sides.

I was far too shy to knock on the door but had a sudden Epiphany. I drove around to the street behind the mansion and began driving past (stalking) the ranch homes there. If I could find out which rancher was directly behind it, well… the back yards would adjoin. Soon, I was talking to a nice young homeowner who was out mowing his front yard. Yes, his house was directly behind the mansion. Why, sure I could metal detect the whole place – any time!

Rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham.

I had a lovely time at the ranch house behind the mansion (“The Ranchion.”) The back yard was massive. I’ve since been back with Cheryl and we will be returning. Here are some of the goodies:

Just the handle, sadly. So pretty.

Pie, anyone?

This beautiful bell is very old. Also very broken.
But it is one of my favorite finds of all time.

Also found a minie ball that I insisted the homeowner keep even though he clearly didn't want it. 

One Friday afternoon, I returned to a yard near my house that I keep as a default site. Pulled this out and it was only later that I realized that not only was it Friday, it was Good Friday. 

I love digging Catholic medals.
And let us not forget the 1980s 10 yen
coin that was near the Catholic medals.

Progress on my collection of metal detecting songs is going well. I’ve never been so excited about a project. One song, written a couple of months ago, is a silly one that I never dreamed anyone would like, but it has proved very popular and I’ve started performing it. The first verse goes like this:

I have never lost a belt buckle in my life

I have never lost a harmonica,

I have never left a mason jar in the yard

I’m perplexed at these phenomena…

And so I cry… How’d this get here???

(We detectorists do expend some brain energy wondering how all this stuff got in the ground and I must render this robust pondering in song. Because who else will???) 

Last week, in the midst of a busy day, I went to the bank. My branch is very new. They tore down a really pretty 1920s-ish house on Gallatin Road to put it in, which really pissed me off at the time but I seem to have adapted. As I got back in my car, I looked closely at the strip of green grass on the edge of the parking lot. It occurred to me that it was a really big strip of green. With old trees. In fact, it looked suspiciously like the back yard of the old house, relatively untouched by ‘dozers.

I went back in the bank and talked to the security guard. Yes, the strip belonged to the bank. SURE, I could detect it!

Let me tell you that at 5 p.m., your Dirt Girl returned to the bank and made many, many withdrawals.

Including a buckle, multiple harmonica reeds and a mason jar lids. (See song lyrics above…)

I always smile when I find harmonica reeds.
BUT the item on the top right corner is NOT a harmonica
reed. It is, according to the president of the
Middle Tennessee Metal Detecting Club,
 some kind of clip, but I cannot remember what
he called it. Sure do miss Doug Drake at
times like this. Also many other times.

Still dirty. That spoon part is massive.

Cincinnati, after a bath in some electric soup. Not
sure what this is. Ideas?

Cool find! Not sure what it is... some kind of strap clip?

Bummer. Cool, old brass ring thing with
giant tree root going right through it.
I know my limits.
(Wait a minute: is this vaguely pornographic?
No! It's not. Stop it.)

I don’t know for sure if soldiers were camped there, at the site of the future Bank of Harmonica – I didn't find any bullets – but some of the stuff is definitely CW. It was crazy to sense the history on this spot, on a busy Nashville corner, next to the drive-thru teller, with hundreds of cars whizzing by. This stuff is OLD.

(One other interesting item: I noticed that as I dug, a couple of robins were watching me carefully. They followed me from hole to hole, looking for worms in the black moist dirt I’d turned up. Wrote a song about it.)

A dance tangent: we've had Flo Speace staying with us for a while. Flo is a redbone coonhound we dearly love. She’s a nervous little canine, but an absolute dearie-dear. We have been working on our tap-dancing routines. Sometimes she likes to rehearse with me, but other times, she prefers not to rehearse.

Today after work, I met up with my new friend, Laura, a wonderful singer-songwriter from Oregon who has been in town about a month. She had a detector as a child and loved it and asked if she could go digging sometime. Yes.

We visited a friend’s huge Inglewood yard for an hour or so. I gave Laura my trusty, old Tesoro Cibola and she went to town and thoroughly skunked me, finding a key with her last name on it.

Yup. Curtis. A Curtis key. Welcome to Nashville, Laura Curtis.

Also this cool item:

Pretty sure this is a clasp from a trunk or
briefcase.

Later in her own back yard, she found a 1940s-era toy fire truck and a car. Don’t have a photo to share but trust me: they are ever so cute.

My non-junk haul for the day (complete with message from the Lovely Beyond):

"Put Purity in your Life"
This is probably from the Purity Dairy -- an iconic
Nashville business. But I prefer to think that I am being reminded
to embrace PURITY (freedom from contamination or adulteration).

I will be thinking about this while I drink a delicious
Lagunitas IPA at next opportunity.

Because Nothing Says "Springtime" Like a Bormann Fuse

Not every Dirt Girl post needs to be epic. I’m going to try for a short one: just a quick recap of recent finds.

In the beginning of March, Cheryl and I found ourselves back at a torn-down house site we had explored a year ago. It’s right in the midst of Battle of Nashville territory – a very fancy neighborhood now. It was kind of strange that it’s just been sitting here all this time – a big, old rain-filled hole surrounded by trash – but we took it as a sign that there was more to find. Found mostly junk, including this weird item, below. I was sure it was a piece of modern plumbing and almost threw it out. Instead, I posted it on Facebook and was surprised when a bunch of the Club guys responded, “Wow! Nice Bormann fuse!”

Plumbing? Please. I am a deadly Bormann
cannonball fuse. The notches are for the
soldiers to set my timer so that when I
explode, I do so at the appropriate time.
I am actually a rarer "Braille" Bormann
fuse -- with dots instead of numbers
so that the soldiers can set my timer
in dark and smoky conditions.
Plumbing? Seriously? Sigh.

Friends in Franklin invited me and Cheryl to come over and hunt the yards and pastures of their new farm. Delicious! We spent two sunny Saturdays there. Here's a sampling of our finds:

Beautiful mystery item + Williams cleaner.

 

Did not expect to find this in the horse pasture.
It's some kind of trophy from the 1950s.

This, too, was unexpected. Turns out it's a
1950s trophy for German shepherd dogs. The
 previous property owner was a veterinarian
who raised German shepherds.

Yup, that's "Muddy" -- the family pig. I touched him.

We noticed a huge church across the street and and got permission for all that property too. It’s obviously been hunted for decades, but we managed to pop out a few more tasty treats.

Previous diggers left behind this beautiful,
small sledgehammer head. Here it is all
cleaned up and polyurethaned. Apple is for
scale. Because apples are pretty.

This, my friends, is very interesting to me. I believe this
is actually a Spanish real (pronounced "ree-al") coin!
Look at the edge, at about 9 o'clock. Do you see the "I S P"?
That's part of the "HISPANIA"!
I  do not know what happened to this coin.
Perhaps it went through a fire?
What do you think????

 

Here's another real I found last year, for comparison.
In this case, the "I S P" is at about 2 o'clock.

My obsession with electrolysis continues unabated. At the last meeting of the MTMDC, some of the guys gave me some old, rusty junk to clean up and I’ve been slowly going through the pile. Why this is fun, I have no idea.

From top left: animal trap, step to get into a carriage,
tiny spike, horseshoe, colonial era (?) axe head.
Banana for scale...

Handles and a buckle thing.

Shears of some sort. 

Yesterday, I received an email from a woman who found this blog online. Seems her brother, Bob, had been playing football in his backyard last November when his platinum wedding ring flew off his finger. He’d rented a detector but had not found it. Would I be interested in helping? I was!

This afternoon, Cheryl and I met up at Bob’s house in a subdivision in Franklin.  I found the ring on the other side of the back fence, next to some unmowed grass. The signal had the distinctive sound of “not deep” and I knew pretty quick this was the ring. I could see its outline in the dirt; just reached down and picked it up. 

The surgical gloves give this
image a certain je ne sais quoi...

Got a nice text from Bob. He promises that his wife will spread the story far and wide to all her FB friends and score us some sweet Franklin properties to hunt – the only “payment” I wanted.

We left the ring with Bob’s neighbor (who invited us to hunt his great-grandmother’s land… you know: the place where she buried $250,000 IN MASON JARS IN THE GROUND THAT WERE FOUND WHEN HIGHWAY 840 WENT THROUGH THE PROPERTY. Yup, that place. We said yes.)

Drove back to the church property for another look around. These cool spring days won’t last long and it was pretty sweet. 

58 minie ball.

 Home by five. A very good day with only one tick.

I Am an Electrical Engineer

The sadness of losing Doug Drake, combined with a hefty serving of bone-aching Tennessee winter, conspired to keep me and Cheryl from any serious digging for a week or so after his funeral.  But little by little, the shadows have been lifting along with the temperatures and we’ve been venturing out.

For our first serious excursion, we decided to revisit a tried-and-true site just west of town, a place Doug and Cheryl discovered on their own and generously invited me to after they’d explored (decimated) it. It was there I found my first CW button – nothing special, but a coup for me.

We brought along our new Junior Digger, Ruth, who has shown great initiative, doing research, buying a good machine, inviting me and Cheryl to hunt her property, joining the Middle TN Metal Detecting Club, coming to see Dirt Girl perform at the Bluebird Cafe, etc. Ruth shows great promise!

Newbie lady detectorist, poised for adventure.

We three spent a lovely afternoon sliding around on a steep hill pulling out bullets and buttons and assorted ancient items from this bona fide CW hotspot.

At one point, I was crouched in the dirt trying to locate something with my pinpointer, when I heard a faint “woof” behind me.

Unexpected, but welcome.

Ruth started her MD career with a bang, pulling out this beautiful, old key.

There's writing on it, but, sadly, not legible.

About a week later, Cheryl and I ventured back to a favorite old home site a bit north of town. We’d covered the open areas last summer but had been waiting til winter to venture into the woods. The property owner (our hero) told us to have at it. He was pretty sure there were some old foundation stones back in there.

It’s just an amazing tract of land – 100+ acres, mostly steep, forested hills and adorable streams. After a lot of tromping around, we started getting some signals and found what might be a pile of foundation stones.

We're not entirely sure what kind of structure this was, or
if it was a structure. But there was enough stuff around it
to indicate concentrated human habitation. If it's a home
site, it does not appear on the 1871 map I have of this area.

 We spent a couple of days at the site. It was hard going -- tons of shotgun shells and thick brush -- but a lot of fun. We both found a ton of harmonica reeds; these folks enjoyed their music. I'd show you the reeds, but I can't find them...  This site was also transcendently beautiful.

Thought this was another shotgun shell but
no: it's a half of a mourning brooch, found
nestled in a huge, rusted chain.

Suspender clip.

I worked very hard for this excellent prize.

Found this in a stream bed. I assume it's a bullet
but I've never seen one like it. Ideas?

The surroundings could not have been more lovely and silent. The patterns of the water beneath the melting ice were like visual melodies. I tried to sing along.

One rainy afternoon, Ruth called desperate to go somewhere, so I offered up a yard near my house that I’d been given permission to explore. The back was filled with clad pennies and a lot of gravel – not fun. But the front was more interesting.

Looks like an Enfield, which signals Confederate soldier.

Cool. Now I just have to learn to play the darn thing.

Cheryl and I went back the next day and she pulled out a Williams cleaner. So, as far as I can guess, there were both Union and Confederate soldiers marching through the area at various times. I’ve never heard of any actual fighting or skirmishes in Inglewood, but who knows… I’m sure not every hostile encounter was chronicled in the Official Records of the Civil War. And soldiers could totally have been camped around here, not fighting, necessarily, but dropping stuff.

Found this just a foot away from the Enfield and my heart skipped when I saw the eagle but instead, I find I am a member of Captain Midnight's Secret Squadron. 

Stop in the name of the law.

Thought this was a battery until I got home and cleaned it up...

The loudest whistle I have ever heard.

So that about sums up my recent digging. BUT. There is much else to tell you.

Dirt Girl has a new obsession: electrolysis. Nope, not hair removal (though I will admit to having had my eyebrows waxed on several occasions.) We’re talking rust removal.

I’d known about this technique for a couple of years, but it just seemed totally out of my league.  (SCIENCE! ELECTRICITY! DANGEROUS CURRENTS!)

But last month, I determined to make use of those bitter, cold days and do something productive with the giant pile of rusted crap outside my back door that screams, “Hoarder lady lives here!” (Disclaimer: I am not a hoarder, but do have a problem with organization…)

We must! We must! We must collect the rust!

Yes, for nigh onto three years, now, I’ve been augmenting my collection of bullets, buckles, coins, rose tags, dog tags, toy cars, rings, keys, cigarette lighters, locks, gun parts and suspender clips with big, honking pieces of heavily rusted iron that I just can’t seem to leave behind in the fields and woods.

We’re talking axe heads, log splitters, chains, horse shoes, mule shoes, hoe pieces, stove legs and hundreds of what I call “round things.”

Anyway… I decided to build my own electrolysis rig: a plastic tub, wire, rebar, water, washing soda and a battery charger. I read many articles and viewed many youtube videos and made many trips to Home Depot where the guy in the electricity aisle looked at me with many inscrutable expressions as I tried to describe what I was doing and what I needed. And you know what? I did it. I, DIRT GIRL, BUILT AN ELECTROLYSIS SYSTEM WHILE WATCHING DOWNTON ABBEY.

It's all attached to a manual battery charger.

 

I did that.

Yup. Did that too.

And it’s working great. It’s extremely fun and satisfying to turn nasty, crusty, flaking ancient iron things into clean, beautiful works of – dare I say it? – art.

This was a rusty mess. Turns out it's Colonial era, used
to suspend pots over a fire. 

I’ve pretty much always got something “cooking” in the back bathroom. On warm days, I dip the derusted pieces in lacquer and dry them outside on some rocks. I’ve been giving away some of the finished pieces and so far, people seem to really love and appreciate them. I can tell because they immediately become rather distant and leave the house in a hurry.

From top left: horse shoe, buckle, two parts of a horse bit
some kind of clip (?), part of a grating, two handles
artillery hammer (?)

Dear reader, can you imagine ANY WAY I could make a living doing electrolysis? I do so want to! Ever so much! (Too much Downton Abbey is being watched in this house.)

In other news, I’m working hard on another project: a record of metal detecting songs. The ones I have written so far are:

I Dug it Up

Triune

Can Slaw

Aluminum… Foiled Again (co-written with Butch Holcomb, publisher of American Digger Magazine)

Pull Tab Ring

The Sword

A few more and I’ll be ready to do some serious recording, so stay tuned.

Another thing: your very own Dirt Girl will be the featured guest on Relic Roundup -- an online radio show sponsored by American Digger magazine -- on Monday, February 24. I’m not sure what we’ll be talking about, but my guess is metal and music. The shows are archived and you can listen in whenever you want!

Finally, this from Cheryl:

One night recently, she was driving in her car when her cellphone rang. It was Doug!

“Hey, BUDDY!” Doug crowed.

“Doug!” said Cheryl. “How are you?”

“I feel wonderful! I can’t believe how good I feel!” said Doug Drake, from beyond the veil.

And that was it. Cheryl woke up. When she told me this story, we laughed and cried.

We do miss our buddy!