Archive for March, 2010

William, aka “FilthyBroke”, has won all the fossils I found in the last Digs O’ The Day installment.  Since the finds weren’t all that impressive, he is also getting the large half of a megalodon shark tooth I found last summer, which is also pictured in that story.  In other words, he just won the random drawing for everything pictured in that story, with the exception of the tooth my daughter found!  (Can’t give that one away- it’s hers, and her first fossil find, y’know.)

Congratulations, William!

And again, thank you to all of our sponsors.  We’ll be giving more goodies away further on, just for fun.

A quick thank you to ca0100000, our newest contributor- 1 share $15

If you read my latest dig story, the “Bladen Road” one, I would like to do a giveaway of everything shown in the story.  (With the exception of Victoria’s shark tooth, of course.)  This means the big half-megalodon tooth fossil I found there last year, and the five fossils I found in the story, plus perhaps an additional random fossil or two.
As of this posting, we’re at 127 shares pledged so far.  Let’s say when we hit 140, I’ll draw a winner, using a random number generator, and each contributor gets one chance per share to win the fossils.  They’re not superb fossils, but maybe the big half of a shark tooth will make somebody an interesting paperweight or something.  (I do have some more where that came from, too.)

~RWS/”LM”

Thanks to docday2003, our latest contributor with 4 Shares $60. Thank you sir!

Reading Rob’s digging posts are always fascinating! This latest one no less because it involves fossils, his daughter and an accident. Check the page index for the “Bladen Road” story-lots of images.

We’ve had something of a slowdown in new pledges but members are getting their initial pledge money to me by Paypal, money orders and checks. We’ve collected about half of what has been pledged so far-time to get the rest in.  We’re also starting to receive coins we can auction on eBay to get that new metal detector for our latest giveaway-sure to be a huge success!

Ask your forum friends if they’ve supported the trip effort yet. If not, please encourage them to do so-we need this second wave of support to continue!

We’d just returned from an overnight trip down to Jacksonville, Florida, and the afternoon found me a little tired and sleepy. I knew I’d only end up napping if I stayed around the house, so I decided to initiate my “walk a mile a day” plan. As mentioned in the previous story, I’ve gotten really out of shape and I’ll be needing to start exercising more and shedding a few pounds before my week-long digging expedition to England in the fall, if that ends up happening. (As of this writing, my friends and readers have put up quite a lot of support to send me on the trip- over 43 contributors have pledged 123 shares totaling $1,865 so far, so it looks as though the trip is becoming a very real possibility!)

I wasn’t up to a detector outing on this particular afternoon, since my knees took a week to recover from the last outing, and I still haven’t bought knee pads. So today was mostly just for the sake of exercise rather than digging.

Still, I knew of a place quite close to home where I could combine a little low-tech, easy treasure hunting with a mile-long walk. Not a detector search, but something simpler… a fossil hunt.

The required tools for a hunt like this come as standard equipment on most human bodies. Nothing but feet, eyes, and hands- that’s it! My optional tool is just a long wooden stake for poking and flipping stuff out of the sand without having to bend and stoop constantly. Today I also brought along an old drywall hammer that has a small hatchet on one end, to act as a rock hammer for chiseling stuff out of the hardpan. In our dirt roads during dry weather, the compressed earth gets really hard-packed and baked to the consistency of brick. Of course I also brought along my wife’s digital camera to document the outing.

The site I chose for my mile-long walk is Bladen Road, in the western portion of Glynn County, Georgia, quite near our rural home. I figured it would be the perfect place to combine walking with fossil hunting, and possibly some wildlife photography as well. One of my birdwatching goals is to see the brightly-colored Painted Bunting. They’ve been spotted around the marshes on barrier islands here, but I’ve never had the honor of meeting one. If and when I ever do, I sure hope I have a camera on hand. With me on foot out in the middle of nowhere on a desolate country road, there is no telling what sorts of birds and wildlife I might see.

If you’re wondering how a road like this can be a source of fossils, it’s because our county obviously uses dredge spoil material to fill in and resurface the dirt roads out here. This dredge spoil is basically sand, pumped up from the bottom of local waterways like the Atlantic shipping channel, Saint Simons Sound, and Brunswick Harbor. It’s full of fossils, including a good number of shark teeth. The shark tooth is Georgia’s state fossil.

One of last year’s unwritten outings was a stroll down Bladen Road, and I found half of a large megalodon tooth. The fossilized teeth of C. megalodon, the extinct giant white shark, are the prize fossils of this area and the biggest shark teeth known. This partial megalodon fossil was buried in the hardpan soil of the roadbed with only a little bit of the root peeking out, and I’d had to chisel it out with the tire tool from the car. These fossils are relatively uncommon finds and are always exciting when they turn up.

Later that same afternoon, down at the boat ramp near our house (the road to which is also surfaced with dredge sand), I was with my daughter Victoria, and she found her first shark tooth. She’d seen some telltale black material in the whitish sand, and asked me to dig it out for her. Was it the typical small tooth of some more common species? No! It was a mostly-intact Megalodon, about four inches long! Wow, talk about beginner’s luck! That was quite a memorable afternoon, with father and daughter both scoring megalodons in the space of about an hour.

My half tooth, at about four and a half inches, was the larger of the two, but hers was more intact, being a whole tooth with just the corners of the root broken off. These bigger teeth tend to suffer some damage when they come up through the dredge, so fully intact ones are truly rare and special finds. Even partial ones are exciting enough for us. Most of the really impressive intact specimens are found by “black water” divers, who grope along the bottom in murky water and find them by touch. That doesn’t sound like a lot of fun to me, so I’m grateful to have the opportunity to hunt these fascinating fossils on dry land.

Victoria wasn’t in the mood to join me this afternoon when she was told I’d be walking a mile and would be out there a while. She went next door to play with the neighbor’s daughter. I told my wife where I was headed, and set out on the day’s adventure.

The road stretched out for miles through the piney woods, with nothing but thickets on either side for most of its length. Occasionally it was criscrossed by other, narrower tracks, which are no doubt used by the paper companies who harvest the trees, or hunters who lease the land. I passed a pair of pickup trucks on my way in, and the men in them released some baying hounds into the woods. I’m a hunter of coins, relics, and fossils rather than wild animals, so I don’t really keep abreast of the hunting season, though I suppose I should, for safety’s sake. I’m not sure what the hounds were after. Deer? Raccoon? Wild hogs? We have all of those. I heard gunshots in the far distance. These particular men didn’t have guns in hand at the moment. They got back into their trucks and took off down the road behind me, leaving their dogs in the woods to chase whatever quarry had been flushed out. I guess they would meet up with the dogs further back down the road, in the direction I’d come from.

I drove on a couple more miles to give the hunters a wide berth. My plan was to find two crossroads that were about a half mile apart, pull the car over onto one of them, walk to the other, and then back, making a mile’s hike in total. If I could walk a mile a day, maybe I’d have a few less pounds on my body and a few more fossils in my pocket.

After parking my car at a crossroad and beginning the walk, I immediately noticed many small bits of white seashell fragments in the dirt road. This was a sure sign of dredge sand. The next thing I looked for was the telltale black of fossilized material, or the triangular shape of fossil shark teeth, which can be either black or grey, and are usually a bit glossier than the bits of shell.

It wasn’t long before I noticed the shape of a shark tooth in the dirt. It wasn’t a big megalodon, but those are rare finds, after all. This was a smaller tooth, but obviously a tooth. The enamel on it was grey and it had tiny serrations along one edge. I’m not sure what species of shark it came from- when it comes to fossils, I’m no paleontologist but rather a pure amateur. I’ve learned how to distinguish a few types, but that’s about all. This tooth, like the four-and-a-half inch Meg I’d found last year near the same stretch of road, was split in two vertically from root to point. It was no great prize, but a step in the right direction. I photographed it where it lay.

I was soon spotting other bits of black fossilized material in the sand. Most of these proved to be bits of whalebone. I’ve heard that whales were the primary food source for prehistoric sharks like megalodon, and usually where there’s fossilized whalebone, there are shark teeth. This whalebone is such a common find on these sites that we don’t always pick it up anymore. Still, because the unenameled root and core portions of a big megalodon tooth are black and porous-looking, just like fossil whalebone is, I usually try to pop all black fossil pieces out of the ground to make sure they aren’t part of a buried Meg. The whalebone tends to be in narrow pieces, with striations like woodgrain along it. I spotted a piece of black fossil material and found it impossible to pry out, so I had to resort to the drywall hammer. As I’d thought, it proved to be a small piece of whalebone.

The next piece of fossilized material had a round, knoblike shape on one side, and sort of a porous, pockmarked look on the other. I have no idea what it is. I’ve read about gastroliths, which are stones that had been ingested by prehistoric creatures, perhaps to aid digestion or act as “ballast”. Some of the gastroliths I’ve seen in pictures looked a bit like this, but I believe gastroliths are usually actual stones, rather than fossil material. Maybe this was the knobbed end of a bone that fit into a ball-and-socket type joint? I have no idea. Fossils from both marine and land animals can be found in this dredge spoil, since the coastline fluctuated over millions of years.

The new season’s mosquitoes are out, now. They were flying around me, though they apparently hadn’t fully developed their bloodlust yet. I was thankful for that. They mostly just swarmed around, never landing to take a bite. Only once did I get my ear buzzed. I am sure it won’t be long before they become really aggressive.

Surprisingly, I saw no birds or animals. I thought my quieter approach on foot would give me better opportunity to see some wildlife. Apparently they saw, heard, or smelled me coming well in advance, though, and made themselves scarce. Only a faint whirring of insects in the thicket announced the presence of any living creatures other than me and the mosquitoes. Maybe I actually have a better chance of seeing wild critters when I’m in the car, because though that method of approach is much louder, the added speed gives them less of a chance to beat it into the woods before being seen.

Finally there was a subdued crashing sound in the thicket, indicating that I’d startled some small animal or large bird. I never saw what made the noise, though. It was long gone into the dense underbrush. It didn’t sound big enough to be a deer. Speaking of which, some tracks nearby indicated that deer had been here. They’d probably come to the side of the road to drink from the drainage ditch. They’re a very common sight in this area.

I reached the second crossroad, half a mile from my car, and turned back, walking on the opposite side of the road and also watching the looser sand along the shoulders for fossils. Soon I pried out another bit of fossil material and found another round, knoblike thing, very much like the first “mystery fossil” but a little bit larger this time. I was no closer to having any idea what they were, though.

I returned to the first crossroad and my car, having broken a light sweat since I’d worn a jacket and the temperature was probably near seventy. One mile walked. It wasn’t so bad. I doubt I could have jogged it, but maybe if I can make myself walk a mile a day, I’ll be in a bit better shape. Surely it can’t hurt. My appetite for walking was spent but I still wanted to find a good fossil, so I decided to stop by the boat ramp on my way home, where Victoria had found her Meg last year.

As I rumbled down the washboard road, I saw a Jeep Cherokee approaching and moved over to let it pass. As it did, I noticed it was Heather, the lady who lives next door to us. She is the same neighbor whose daughter Victoria had gone to play with. I thought it strange to be passing her out here in the middle of nowhere. She stopped and was backing up, so I did the same, bringing our driver’s side windows up next to one another.

“What are you doing out here, in the middle of nowhere?” I asked.

“Looking for you,” she replied.

I thought she was kidding for a moment, until I saw her face. It was serious, and even a little worried.

“What?”

“Victoria fell off the swing set and broke her arm. Lenee tried to reach you on your cell phone but couldn’t get through, so she sent me out to look for you. They’ve gone on to the immediate care center.”

I blurted out a profanity, failing to notice that Heather’s daughter, Victoria’s playmate, was in the passenger seat. I apologized.

I had brought my cell phone out with me, but hadn’t turned it on. I seldom do, unless I need to make an outgoing call. I turned it on and attempted to call my wife, Lenee, but got no signal. Heather and her daughter drove on, and I raced down what remained of Bladen Road, all the while trying to get a signal on the phone. About the time I reached the southern terminus of the road, where it becomes paved, I got enough of a signal to call, and was told by my wife that the immediate care center had sent them on to the emergency room.

When I arrived at the hospital, wife and daughter were both much calmer than I’d expected. We’d gone through a similar ordeal a while back, when Victoria got kicked hard in the forehead by her pony. That one was more serious. This time, thanks to pain medication, she was relaxed and actually smiled at me when I came in.

She had done a backflip off the swing, landing on her face and hands, getting a mouthful of dirt and breaking the radius bone in her left arm, near the wrist. She took the whole procedure at the hospital well, I must say. Better than I would have done, at her age. (Or even twice her age.) She was actually concerned that she’d miss school the next day! It turns out that her teacher, who recently had a baby, was coming back to the school to visit and show off the newborn. Not even a broken arm could keep Victoria from seeing her teacher and that baby! (It didn’t, either- though she was out of school the following day, I did bring her in for an hour so she could see the baby and show off her cast to the class.)

So like the last outing when my car blew up, this one ended in disaster, but nothing permanent, thank goodness.

It wasn’t the most productive of outings, but at least I got out. I had my one-mile walk in the woods, and found five fossils: one partial shark tooth, two pieces of whalebone, and the two rounded “mystery fossils”. The day wasn’t a total waste.

~RWS

INDEX OF PAST DIG STORIES (temporarily housed on Collectors Universe)

3.7.2010- Our latest contributors are: Grip for 5 shares,  Joan.of.art for 3 shares, and Bailathacl for 1 share.

 So nice to wake up in the morning to friendly and supportive e-mails from folks like these!

Almost every day now when I check my mail there is a cheery message title or two (or more) listing contributions or support for LordM’s anticipated trip to dig in the Queen Mothers green fields. It has made opening the mail an event I can look forward to; not a spam-destroying chore.

Every message I receive speaks of  a deep affection for LordM and a willingness to support his quest. To be fair, it’s almost certainly a quest we would all love to participate in. That is why, perhaps, the level of contributions towards this trip has been steady and strong. Rob has done many kindnesses over the years it seems, and people have long memories… and through his writings and images, he’ll make the experience come alive for all of us, and in the end we will have actually participated, part of a story that has only just begun, with an ending that still needs writing.

There has been much hustle and bustle in the background and the dust clouds are still settling- hopefully we’re going to have some trip specifics to share with you in the near future.

Don’t forget this invaluable tidbit about the importance of  living vs existing in the words of Stephen Vincent Benét who famously said: “Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways”.

We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot
Drink up, me hearties, yo ho!
We kidnap and ravage, and don’t give a hoot
Drink up, me hearties, yo ho!

3.6.2010 in the pm.  Welcome today to olmanjon, Carl’s Coins and Mr. & Mrs. Filamcoins from Manila, our latest contributors as of 1:15 on this beautiful Saturday afternoon. Thanks for flying PCGS Forum Airlines.

3.6.2010 in the am.  Now  tobacco-free for 30 days!

I’m reminded of the quote:  ”Don’t be fooled by the calendar.  There are only as many days in the year as you make use of”.

Well, we made darn good use of the last 7! My initial thought is that we are a little less than halfway home: I never thought we could get there so fast. LordM’s Gold Coin Giveaway is certainly helping. The torrent of promisory PM’s has slowed to a trickle however, as I thought it might. There’s always an initial surge of enthusiasm and like any wave that rushes up on the shore, it then receeds, taking with it the footprints newly created.

Time to establish some new footprints.

Our first giveaway will end this Sunday and to date there are about 35 entrants- I’d love to see the next one closer to 100. That’s why I think we need to give away a metal detector. This is just a generic picture-model and cost need to be determined by forum members through discussion.  

I would like to pay for this (hopefully superb) giveaway prize through your coin donations which I will sell on eBay, proceeds of which will buy the detector. All that’s required are some coins that you’re tired of.

Nothing fancy, just not junk…something that will sell, even if only for a few dollars. I’ll do the auctions and absorb those costs, I’ll even refund you the cost of shipping the coin(s).

With a little participation from forum members who would like to contribute quietly (this is your chance-we won’t be listing donors by name), and the general body, we could have something anyone would be proud to own.

This MD giveaway open only to LordM European Trip Contributors, chances to win are equal among all contributors. If you’re on the contributor list you’re entered automatically once. This should attract many new entrants who will not feel overwhelmed by previous numbers.

If we can make this fly, I’ll let you know when it starts with a giveaway thread on the world coin forum. Donors are invited to PM me or e-mail me at laurentyvan@hotmail.com.

I was in the doctor’s office recently, to renew my prescription for thyroid medicine. The nurse instructed me to step up onto the scale. I cringed inwardly, expecting to experience the rending sound of twisted metal and the sight of springs flying everywhere as my weight crushed the thing. My doctor is a nice lady, and I didn’t want to damage her equipment, but the nurse was insistent. I had to step up. As I did so, the scale managed to survive somehow. My eyes went to the digital display.

Two-eighty-three.

Holy hamburgers, Fatman! Surely that can’t be right!

I knew it was, though. Yep… two hundred and eighty-three pounds.

Let’s face facts, here, folks. I am no longer “pleasantly plump” or “a little chunky”. I’ve gone full-bore FAT… and so much for not passing the dreaded two-fifty barrier. I might wear it a little better if I were six-foot-five, but I’m a mere five-ten. I knew I was getting pretty grotesque, but this just confirms what the mirror’s been telling me all along. No doubt the thyroid issue has a little bit to do with it, but I can’t fall back on that as an excuse. I’ve let myself go for far too long, and my days of eating what I pleased in the quantities I pleased, while not exercising, are pretty much gone, unless I’m willing to put up with some serious health issues.

Speaking of exercise, or the lack of it, we come back on-topic to my favorite kind- the only type of exercise that get me outdoors at all- treasure hunting.

Last year was not a big year for digging on my part. I had only two or three detector outings, and only one of them was fruitful. I got sidetracked and failed to write it up, though I did take pictures at the time. (I’ll try to get to it after I finish this one.) There were a couple of outings where I went “eyeball” hunting and found some fossil shark teeth, and that was it for 2009. Now here we are in 2010 and I knew it was time to haul my horribly out-of-shape carcass into the field and put the coil to the soil once again. Time to sweep out the cobwebs, so to speak. That’s why I’ll call this outing “Operation Cobweb”. It was more about actually getting out and doing something than it was about finding anything. I had low expectations after being dormant for so long.

Speaking of exercise, and getting in shape, my first duty of the day was to attend an event at my daughter Victoria’s school. All of the school was jumping rope to benefit the American Heart Association. The school gym instructor explained how school physical education programs weren’t all about dodge ball and kick ball anymore (oh- have I ever mentioned how much I loathed P.E. class when I was in school?) Now they teach the kids about proper fitness and diet, and so forth. As the speech went on, I started hearing echoes of what I’d heard in the doctor’s office the other day. What’s good for the kids is good for the parents, I reckon. I hope Victoria grows up with better physical habits than I have. My mother tried to raise us properly and feed us right (and I was actually a skinny kid), but once I got out on my own I went down the path to jolly obesity. Now I’m not so jolly about it. I decided to draw a little inspiration from what my daughter and her schoolmates were doing.

The jump rope thing was fun. The second-graders raised something like sixteen hundred dollars, making the total from the school nearly six thousand, and that was even before the third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders jumped. Small wonder my daughter’s school has held this event’s fundraising trophy for several years running.

Afterward, in the school parking lot, I noticed the right rear tire of my vehicle was almost flat. It had developed a slow leak over the last two cold nights. This morning there’d been ice on the car and frost on the grass, but it was sunny under blue skies and starting to warm up a little. I used the portable pump thingie I keep in the car to pump it back up a bit, and off I went on today’s digging adventure.

The leaking tire decided my strategy. I knew of a tire place on Gloucester Street downtown. I could leave the car there for tire repairs and then walk a few blocks into Old Town for some detecting. When I got out at the tire place, I noticed an unpleasant smell of hot antifreeze and wisps of steam hissing from around the hood of the car. It was overheating, and obviously boiling over. This made me angry, because I had just spent seven hundred bucks fixing the water pump and a bunch of other things on it. I asked the tire store manager to not only fix the leaky tire, but to have a look around under the hood to see why it was overheating and to make sure the recent mechanics had done their job properly.

I walked to Old Town along an extra-wide grassy median where I have heard there used to be railroad tracks. I believe there were, because there is lots of gravel (crushed granite) in the soil which makes it hard to dig. Down here we usually do not encounter rocks in the soil. My first detector targets were trash, just as I’d expected them to be. Unfortunately there was a lot of trash all around this area, not just in the ground but lying on top of it, too.

I slung the detector over my shoulder and marched a few blocks further south down the median, until I came upon the old cemetery. This is the oldest surviving cemetery in Brunswick. The earliest marked gravestone in it, that of Mrs. Charlotte Plant, dates to 1838. Brunswick is much older than that, though, so the earliest burial ground in the city has been lost to time. Some local lore places it in Wright Square, but an archaeologist I spoke with once said that’s not true. Anyway, this particular cemetery, Oak Grove, is one of the first places I ever went metal detecting in, back in the early 1980s. I remember finding a nickel from the 1950s in one of the dirt lanes, and being excited by something so “old” (I was only a young teenager at the time.)

I paused to take a photo near the main north gate of the cemetery, making sure to include plenty of blue sky and some palm trees, so I could taunt my many snowbound internet pals with pictures of our milder February weather.

These days I’m not so quick to go metal detecting in cemeteries as I used to be, but I realized that on the outside of the cemetery, I’d only hunted around three sides of the outer fence in the past. The west side, which was directly in front of me, had a dirt lane running alongside the cemetery boundary, and it was virgin territory. I had never detected it for fear of aluminum trash and because I’d been occupied with greener pastures elsewhere. I doubted anyone else had ever detected it, either.

There was bound to be plenty of trash there, but surely there could be some old coins near the gate. In the lane just outside the east gate, years ago, I’d dug a lovely high-grade 1920-S Mercury dime. Barely a foot away from that, I dug a second Mercury dime dated 1937. If the east gate could produce two Merc dimes, why couldn’t the west gate produce some Indian cents or something equally interesting? Maybe a Confederate button? Dozens of Confederate soldiers lay nearby, slumbering in their graves beneath little flags and iron memorial crosses. Living ex-soldiers no doubt had visited this place many times in the past, perhaps in uniform on Confederate Memorial Day, and maybe they lost some buttons off their jackets as they went through the old wrought iron gate. I’m pretty good at imagining scenarios like this. An active imagination can be helpful to a treasure hunter, if he doesn’t let it go unchecked.

I set off along the grassy strip outside the fence, but found the ground as dry and hard as concrete, so I moved into the lane, instead. Countless years of vehicle and foot traffic had worn it down well below the ground level of the lawn. Maybe this would give me access to finds that had once been buried much deeper. In this area, I knew that coins from the 1700s and early 1800s were not only possible, but could be quite shallow in the sand road, too. But there would be a lot of trash- that’s the downside to hunting dirt roads. At least in the dirt it would be easier to dig, without having to hack through grassroots. Even if the dirt was hard, I could chip away at it.

The dirt, though indeed hard, was easier to dig in some places, and I chased several targets which proved to be aluminum trash or screwtop bottlecaps, just as I’d expected.

I decided to pursue one signal that read “nickel” on the detector’s meter, since it was in slightly softer sand. Normally I wouldn’t have bothered with a shallow nickel signal in such a trashy place, because nickel signals on my detector are more often aluminum junk than actual nickels, and it is a waste of time chiseling through brick-hard soil or hacking through roots, only to find it is a pulltab or chunk of shredded beer can. (I do usually dig the deeper nickel signals, of course.) Still, it behooves one to dig everything possible. Some small gold targets can fall into that “nickel” or “pulltab” range. (I once air-tested my wedding band. Beep! The detector proclaimed it to be a pulltab.)

One nice thing about “naked dirt”, even compressed dirt in a road, is that you can dig with your feet without even bending down. I swept my foot back and forth over the area where I’d gotten the nickel signal. It immediately revealed a brown disc lying in the grey sand. Wow- it really was a nickel, this time! I didn’t have my glasses so I couldn’t read the year on it, but I could see there was a mintmark near the date, which meant it was a modern one. The old ones had the mintmark to the right of the building on the reverse. So a nickel, yes, but just five cents in modern change. Grubby modern change, at that.

In the southwestern corner of the cemetery there was a big old camellia bush with lots of pink flowers blooming on it- a sure hint of springtime to come. I don’t know if camellia bushes are exclusively southern, but they sure make me think of the Deep South, as does our Spanish moss that hangs from the trees. Many wisps of that hung from a live oak nearby. I figured the scene was worth a snapshot.

I got a good coin-range signal on the detector, and dug. And dug. It proved to be a piece of large rusty iron, too large and too deep to recover without a major engineering effort. So close to the site of former trolley or railroad tracks, I was not surprised to find big iron. I left it there and covered the hole back up. Another signal produced a copper ring of some sort. It might have been a letter “O” off of something, but I suspect it more likely was an old grommet or washer.

One target looked like a pencil eraser at first- I often find pencil erasers (the metal collar part that attaches the actual rubber eraser to the pencil) while out digging. This was not an eraser but an old bullet, however. Near that I found an old rifle shell which was probably unrelated to the bullet. It might have once been fired in a military salute at the cemtery.

My knees were in agony from kneeling on the hard dirt. I hadn’t brought my shovel with me, since I was on foot, and walking through the neighborhood with a detector on my shoulder probably would have drawn enough stares. So everytime I dug, I had to get down on my hands and knees. (Note to self: it’s time to buy some knee pads.)

A “pulltab” range signal produced something I’ve never found before… a gold coin! It was a Spanish escudo, dated 1798! There was a small hole in it, like it had once been worn as a charm or jewelry piece.

Hahaha- gotcha for a second, there, didn’t I? JUST KIDDING! Don’t I WISH I’d found that!

That last bit was just a big fat lie from a big fat guy. I didn’t dig that gold piece. I’ve never found a gold coin, though on rare occasions I’ve dug gold jewelry. I bought that coin. It hangs on my “Holey Gold Hat”, a sort of trademark top hat I wear when I go to coin shows.

There IS a small potential for Spanish gold to be found in this town, though. It’s happened before. Steve Smith, my detecting mentor, once found a slightly earlier gold escudo from the late 1700s here. On the same site he got a beautiful 1907 US ten-dollar gold piece, too! So he’s accomplished the detectorist’s dream not just once, but twice.

For most of us, a gold coin is literally a once-in-a-lifetime find. Will I get one in my lifetime? We shall see, we shall see. An exceedingly generous group of my internet friends and regular readers is taking up a collection to send me to England on a detecting tour. If that ever happens, maybe I’ll hit gold over there. (Who’d have thought that anyone would like these little dig stories so much? I’m amazed.)

Anyway, back to what I really found. Though not gold, it was a coin- a Lincoln cent. It was clear from the Memorial reverse that it was modern. The date was 1978.

So that was it. Six cents and some trash. Not much of a haul, but typical of my less productive outings, and at least I shook the cobwebs off, right?

I’d had enough exercise for one day. I walked three or four blocks back to the tire place, only to receive the news that my car had a blown intake manifold gasket, or something like that. I know zip-o-la about cars, so they could’ve said it was a blown freem drive manipulator or deionized pulsejet plasmatron, for all I know. I did understand all too clearly the next thing that was said, though- my car was about to cost me ANOTHER seven hundred bucks or more. It turns out the last mechanics had done what they were supposed to with the water pump and whatnot, but I’d just had the misfortune to have yet another major repair crop up in the same month. I told the tire store manager that there was no way I could afford that right now, and that I only had enough juice on my debit card to pay him the twenty-something for the tire repair. I reached into my wallet.

Debit card? WHAT debit card? It wasn’t there! AAACK! I just remembered I’d given it to my wife the day before, to pay some bills. Now I owed Tire Guy twenty-three bucks and had only eight bucks in my wallet, plus a credit card which I knew was maxed out. (Times have been pretty lean since I got laid off from the Sea Island Company two years ago.) I told him to try running the credit card. It wouldn’t go, not even for such a relatively small amount. So I was stuck. He suggested I apply for a line of credit there. I asked what sort of interest rate they charged and he admitted it was 26% (ugh!), but there was no interest for the first six months. So I said, “OK, sign me up.” I was going to need to fix the multiphase dilithium crystal whatchamacallit, anyway, so I could put today’s tire job and the major repair on the new account and pray that I could pay it off in time before the exorbitant interest kicked in. I was approved, charged the tire repair to my new account, and was free to go. I asked Mr. Nice Tire Guy if the vehicle would be OK to drive home now that it had cooled off a bit. He said it wasn’t a great idea, but I had to be back home in time to meet Victoria’s school bus.

I got over the big Sidney Lanier Bridge partway home, and the temp gauge in the car redlined. She was gonna blow… I knew it. Pretty soon the car would only reach a top speed of forty miles an hour. I limped it to a truck stop at the I-95 junction and had to call for help. I called my wife, who agreed to leave her job early to come and rescue me (she was on her lunch break, anyway.)

As I gathered my belongings from the dead car, I opened the hatchback and found to my horror that the detector wasn’t there. I had just left a thousand-dollar metal detector sitting in the waiting room of Tire Kingdom! What an idiot! I guess I’d been so stressed out by the news I’d gotten that I took off without retrieving it. Fortunately I had Mr. Tire Guy’s business card. If he hadn’t thought I was a loser before over the whole missing debit card and maxed-out credit card issues, he was gonna think it now, for sure.

With trembling hands, I dialed the number on my cellphone. By now I was thoroughly stressed out.

An elderly black woman answered. When I asked for Mr. Tire Guy (whose name was Billy Something), she told me I had the wrong number. OK, I was getting too flustered. I carefully checked the number on the card and dialed again. Got the same old lady. Third try, same lady.

WHAT WAS GOING ON? Why would the Tire Kingdom manager’s telephone number listed on his business card ring at somebody’s home? I went into the Steak & Shake restaurant to wait for my wife, after calling her back to see if she could swing by and pick up my detector before she rescued me. I tried Tire Kingdom a fourth time and finally got Billy- Mr. Tire Guy. I told him what happened, asked him to give the detector to my wife, and to have the car towed back there so they could go ahead with the major repair.

That was truly bizarre. I don’t know why the same telephone number would have come up wrong on the first three out of four tries, but it did. I had checked and rechecked it. It must have been some sort of weird cell phone tower thing, except I was no longer moving when I made any of the calls. Strange. It felt like Fate was taunting me, making the phone misdial while I was in the midst of such a disastrous afternoon.

It all turned out fine in the end, though. My wife rescued the detector and then me, we had lunch, and went home. That was it.

Now aren’t you glad I dragged you along to see what one of my typical unproductive digs looks like, and pranked you by pretending to find a gold coin, too? No? Aww, c’mon… it was fun (except the automotive part).

Wish me better luck next time, please!

~RWS