We Could All Use A Story!

[mn90403]

I detect several days a week no matter the beach conditions.  Lately I make it simple and go to a couple of the same beaches and I get what is available for that particular day.  Yesterday, Monday morning I got out a bit late (7AM) after a busy weekend for the beach and saw that the tractors had already raked the blanket areas.  It is not a pattern I usually follow in dry sand but I know it can be productive.  I headed to my small wave, wet sand beach and found next to nothing.

I was getting ready to leave when I was approached by a guy with his gf/wife.  He said 'Do you want to hear a joke,' in an 'island accent' and I said, ok.  He said 'I was swimming yesterday and I lost my Gucci Chain!'  I'm looking at this tall, polite black guy and thinking ... this is not a joke.  haha  He proceeded to tell me that he was here from St. Thomas and he had gone in the water on Sunday afternoon and forgot to take off his chain he had bought at his home island.  This is something I wanted to help him find but also know more.

He told me that it was just a couple of life guard stations down from where he found me.  Ok, 4 life guard stations later we made it to his swimming area.  This is one of MY beaches.  When conditions are right it is a good detecting beach.  As we walked his wife showed me pictures from the day before on her phone.  I got to see the round (50g) chain he had been wearing.  I told them it could be near where they lost it because the waves had been small, the tide was not big and the current was weak.

When I started detecting the area I knew it was going to be a problem because it was the little 'suck out' waves that weren't going to take a heavy chain and push it up a sloped beach.  I searched the water/wave line and it was a hard pack with the rocks churning up and down.  We needed a snorkel!  It was clear and if a chain was there you would be able to clearly see it but we were now 18 hours after the loss.  I had been over this beach to get my 4 rings on Saturday morning.  There was no new patch in the area.  

It was time for me to go.  They were flying back to NYC in the afternoon and would be back at their island sometime this week.  He had lost his prized chain but we agreed he should still enjoy the trip.  We exchanged phone numbers.  He would have paid me a reward (he offered) but I couldn't find it but I got a good STORY.

That beach will never be the same.  I will always look for Lebron's chain on that beach.

I hope you get a good STORY about a beach where you detect.

Mitchel

[Compass]

Wow Mitchel, that IS a cool story! I mean, you already know and hunt that spot regularly so now there's always that possibility of finding it when you visit. We have a decent negative tide this weekend and if you wade out a bit you might be able to get to the spot where he lost it.

We haven't had the biggest surf lately and that chain sounds massive so I wonder if it will move much? Good luck finding it. Knowing it is there will make your future hunts more exciting I'm sure.

[Ridge Runner]

This story didn’t come from a beach hunt but it’s still a story.

 We have to go back in time to 1970 . I’d just moved to this small town because of my job with the phone company.

 The first thing I do was locate some good places to hunt .

 I’d hunted under the high school bleachers several times but one day the caretaker stop me to tell me a story about this kid . What had happened this kid loved football but was handicap and couldn’t play. He was there that night because his town team was playing. His team made a touchdown and the kid jumped up throwing his hands in the air and his high school ring went air borne. The caretaker said everyone had looked for that ring over and over again but without any luck. He said what town he was from and that was the end of that was my thinking.

 Time had past but here one day I was back detecting there . I had a habit of sliding the coil on the ground on the way back to my car. That day it paid off because I got a good signal and dug it . Well low and behold it was that ring  

 That caretaker had said the town the boy was from and the ring showed the same. I took off in the middle of the week so the school would be open to find the name and maybe where he lived . He was out of school already and the staff was more than helpful. They knew he had a cousin still in school there so she was able to tell me how to get to his house in the country.

 Knocking on this farm house door a lady came to the door saying may I help you. I told her what I was there for and I could see the excitement in her face. She told me all about her son and of course I knew a lot already. The sad thing that he wasn’t at home then because he was at work. I told her I didn’t want a reward but just to be sure he got his ring back . 
 His mom said I know he’ll want to thank you so she took my address.

 I guess little over a week went by and here came a letter thanking me with a check for five dollars.

 Sometimes you may never get a thank you but you know you done the right thing. Like said in this case I did.

 Chuck 

[Ridge Runner]

This will be a very short story about.

    The Day The Carrot Got Married

 Again we go back in time to the year of 1967 . I don’t know why but all my stories have buffalo chips on them.

 Me and a friend was scouting out some places to hunt . We seem this old looking place so we stopped to talk with the owner . This lady was working in her yard so we confronted her if we could get permission to hunt and she said yes but had a story to tell first .

 Some time back she was planting a garden and complete getting it all in the ground when she discovered her wedding band was missing. She didn’t want to dig up everything being she just finished planting it all .

 When it was time to harvest her crop of vegetables. She was pulling up the carrots she looked and on one it had grown through the wedding band.

 For the lady it was a happy ending.

 Carrots really don’t get married!

 Chuck 

[Ridge Runner]

Guys you know when you give your senior ring to some girl you can loose the ring and the girl at the same time.

 I’d hunted this old school many times before with good luck finding old coins. To put a date on this school it’s the one I went to when I was in the second grade. Time line when I was hunting the target that made this story was 1974 about.

 I was hunting under this merry go round as I had in the past . It was always good for two or three coins for me hunting with my White’s 66 TR . I got what I’d call a good loud solid signal that said dig me . I punch down about two inches and out popped this gold senior ring into the light of day . Right away I could see it came from a small town just north of the town I was in . It had a spring that fit inside to make the ring to fit a smaller finger.

 Well now I had to find out if guy not only lost his ring and maybe the girl too .

 I had a lady I knew that gone to the same school but years before. I gave her a call when she would be available for me to show her the ring . 
 Well that day came but hold on to your rocking chair you won’t believe what she said. She took one look at the ring and the date and said I know who this ring belongs to and he’s a relative. All I could say was WHAT.

 She gave him a call to double check and it was his . At the same time I made appointment with him to return the ring .

 When I met him he said that his girlfriend was babysitting across the street from the school and took the kids over to play on the merry go round. That’s how she come to loose it .

 Like others in the past he thank me and wanted to reward me but I just let him know my reward was returning the ring .

 I know you wanted to know what happen to that girlfriend . 
 Well this story has a happy ending in he married that girl and now that young man is complete by getting his ring back too .

 Chuck 

PS At that time I was a dealer for White’s and somewhere I have pictures of that return. I think I’ll let that sleeping dog lie .

[cuniagau]

Let’s go for a 2fer.  Back in 2018 before I retired, I had a co-worker tell me one day in the breakroom at work, that he had been doing some dozer work on the family property and that there were several old homesteads that I could detect if I wanted to.  I told him that I love to detect old homesteads and he gave me locations and told me to have fun.  I then told him that if anyone in the family had every lost anything that I would be happy to look for that too.  He started laughing and then told me about his grandmother telling him about his Uncle Johnny losing a silver quarter when he was little and it had upset him so much that everybody in the family looked for it.  He had lost it between the house and the barn.  My co-worker moved into the house when his grandmother passed away.  He said that it really bothered his grandmother that she couldn’t find that quarter and give it back to “Uncle Johnny”.  I told him that I would come over on Saturday morning and see if I couldn’t find that quarter. 

He got a little more info in that it was in the mid to late 1950’s when it was lost and he thought that he knew the path to the barn from that time period.  We decide it would have been dated no later than 1957 as his uncle was born in 1952.  I spent over an hour and dug a lot of period nuts, bolt, plow sheers, etc but no silver quarter.  I ask it there might have been another route from the house to the barn.  He called his mother, Uncle Johnny’s sister, and she said maybe this other way might have been the path back then.  I completed one gridline to the barn and on my way back I got a silver hit on my CTX 3030.  Down 9 ½ inches I popped out a 1954 Franklyn half dollar.  Right year but wrong denomination.  I swung my coil back over the hole and got an iron grunt and another silver chirp just barely audible and to the side of the original plug.   So I dug down and pulled out a tie rod end.  So that was the iron grunt alright.  I swung back over the hole and the silver sounded off loud and proud.  I dug out a bit more soil and out popped a well worn 1920 Walking Liberty half dollar.  Jeez, my first ever two half dollar coin spill.   About that time my co-worker came out and ask how I was doing.  I showed him the half dollars and then continued looking for the silver quarter for about another hour.  Gee whiz, how could I dig two halves and miss that quarter?

I talked to my co-worker on Monday at work and we talked more about the missing quarter and I ask him if he could talk to Uncle Johnny and find out if he remembered where he might have lost it because we must have been looking on the wrong path to the barn.

He called me later that evening and was laughing.  He had called Uncle Johnny as ask him if he remembered losing some money when he was little and if he remembered maybe where.  Uncle Johnny said, “Yes, I lost two half dollars that my grandpa paid me for digging potatoes, between the house and barn.   Grandma had the story wrong and had told it wrong for years. LOL

So the next weekend, I met Uncle Johnny at my co-workers house and gave him back the two silver half dollars at the very spot that he had lost them somewhere between 55 and 60 years before.  That is the only time I have ever been able to repatriate money to someone in my 51 years of metal detecting.

The second part of the story is that along with the Uncle Johnny lost money was a class ring that was lost on a Halloween hayride on the family farm in 1990. It was church sponsored for the youth group of the church.  A 16 year old girl took her mother’s class ring and wore it on the hayride.  At one point someone jumped out from behind some trees to scare the kids on the hay wagon.  She screamed and threw up her hands and off went the ring.  My co-worker’s dad owned the land and search the field for several days after the hayride trying to find the ring.  My co-worker was probably about 8 or 10 years old and grew up with that story.  In 2000 the girl moved back home after being diagnosed with colon cancer and passed away just before Christmas 2000.  My co-worker was in the youth group at church and they had gone to her house the night before she passed, to sing Christmas Carols.  So, he grew up with the lost ring story and the girls passing and was hoping that I could find the ring 28 years after it was lost in a 20 acre cow pasture.  His dad had told him of the approximate ½ mile route of the hayride zig zagging the pasture. 

Well two weeks after finding Uncle Johnny’s half dollars, I was back out detecting a 20 acre field for a ladies class ring.  After finding out that someone had jumped out from behind a tree to scare the kids on the wagon, I had the search area narrowed down to one end of the field where the only trees were.  But they were all along the whole ¼ mile end of the field.  But after about 45 minutes, several musket balls and modern bullets, I got a good sounding hit on my 3030.  Down about 8 inches, out comes a ring.  Not only a ring but the blue class ring that had been hiding at that spot for 28 years. 

I called my co-worker and ask him if he was home and he was.  I said, “I will be there in five minutes”.  When he came to the door and I showed him the ring, he had a grin from ear to ear.  We had to jump into his truck and go to his Mom and Dad’s house to show them.  They were equally thrilled.  It had really bothered everyone for years and especially after the girl has passed away.

About a week later, at the church were all of them attended, I met them after the Sunday service.  When I took the ring out of my pocket, I told the girl’s mother that the last person to touch that ring before I found it was her daughter.  So from her daughter’s hand to my hand and from my hand to her hand.  I can tell you that the waterworks were flowing that day from the girl’s mother and father to my co-worker and all of his family.  It was such a great feeling to be part of a 28 year lost ring story.