Family Treasure From The Past - 1917

Unseen forces are always at work in our lives; premonition, coincidence, happenstance, and all the other words for odd things happening at odd times. Treasure hunting, in general, is full of these, and more. But what about treasures that you never recognized as a treasure...nothing a metal detector could find, even if you knew where it was buried? This happened to me, quite recently, and it all started with the recent movie "1917," a true story of two WWI soldiers on a mission to warn another British regiment inside Germany of a coming ambush that, if they don't succeed, could cost 1,600 soldiers their lives. Seeing the previews of this picture, brought back memories of my Grandfather George, my mother's father, who served throughout WWI, and eventually WWII, but his WWI adventures are what I remember most. My grandfather was a carpenter by trade, and a quiet man, who always reminded me of a movie-star. He was not a shy man by any stretch of the imagination, but he held the silent strength that most Americans of the late 19th and early 20th Century embodied. They were Americans not confused as to who they were, or what they believed in and were willing to back it up with force if need be to protect their loved ones, country and allies from evil and tyranny. Or would die trying. 



Grandpa George in France circa 1917

 Grandpa George died over 50-years ago. Living in rural Connecticut, he had a massive heart attack while making a sandwich in his kitchen. No paramedics then, only an ambulance that took over an hour to get there, by which time he had breathed his last. We attended his funeral by flying half the night on a Northeast Yellowbird 727. Strangely enough, he had visited us in Ft. Lauderdale only 3-weeks earlier, and had flown on an airplane for the very first, and very last, time in his long life! He had seen combat, and had also been General John J. Pershing's driver (or chauffer) in France. But that was long ago, and even my memories of him grow dim, but they came back with renewed clarity a few weeks ago when I opened a large brown-paper mailer from my sister in Connecticut. Opening it, a sealed plastic bag tumbled out, filled with a stack of documents and leather wallets. I carefully removed the piece of notebook paper that my sister had penned; "...I got these from our cousin Glenda...some of Grandpa George's things she thought you would like." I opened the small brown book and read my grandfather's handwriting on the inside cover, penciled in more than 100-years ago in 1917 war-torn France. A damaged photographic negative was also slipped into the inside cover. It was an unbelievable piece of family history that somehow survived reasonably intact after over a century! 





  I have no clue who the young man is in the U.S. Army automobile...probably a friend of my grandfather. A few other artifacts of the war were included in the package, German marks and French francs dated 1918, were in a surprisingly well-preserved brown leather wallet along with several tattered maps of France, probably used by Grandpa George in navigating General Pershing's staff car across the countryside.

Handling these 100-plus year old documents is difficult, as they have been stored folded, probably since 1919 or so. It seems infinitely strange I should be holding and reading documents my grandfather held and read over 100-years ago. Oddly it makes me think that perhaps events in time and space still do exist simultaneously, and that somewhere and some-when in 1917, he is just now writing the name of  Red Cross nurse Miss Alice Lee Herrick of Chicago in his small souvenir book as the artillery booms in the background. 

The Mordes of the 1980's - Long Before The End of the World

I was fairly active in writing treasure-hunting articles back in the 1980's. We had no digital cameras back then, and I used a 35 mm Pentax ME camera, shot Eastman Kodak Tri-X B&W, had my own darkroom, in which I was always found developing and printing the 8x10 glossies I'd send along with the manuscript. I actually wrote for a couple magazines, an in-flight mag for Delta, and a few other general interest publications. A case-in-point here, I interviewed and did an article about Jerry and Cindy Mordes in 1984, who then owned "Pot Of Gold Metal Detectors" in Ft. Lauderdale, for the now-defunct Lost Treasure Magazine.. Jerry was an animated guy, a lot like a game show host, and he told me thru a lot of hand gestures and narrative, that he and his wife Cindy were avid (read addicted) beach and water hunters and searched every single low tide, AM and PM, for usually a 3-months straight. He said they were almost dead at the end of each detecting marathon, but found some really amazing and valuable things in the process. You have got to realize this was 35 years ago, before metal detecting became the "National Pastime;" you didn't have 15 to 20 people metal detecting the beach every hour, on the hour, every quarter-mile, digging every single bottlecap and rusted tent stake, and no social media to proudly display your pile of rust. And although the finds were many, the rewards were less; you have to remember gold was around $35 an ounce then, not the $1300 or more an ounce it is today. Cindy related how her and Jerry got called out on an emotional mission looking for lost pauper graves in Ft. Lauderdale's "Evergreen Cemetery"

Jerry and Cindy Mordes circ.1984-note the "new"old machines behind them

Cindy said "Evergreen was one of the original cemeteries in Fort Lauderdale and has graves dating back to the Civil War." In particular, she also explained, that over the last century or so, Florida's watery and swampy ground had slowly but surly pulled the pauper grave caskets and their occupants deeper and deeper, until there were many scores of pauper graves lost to the caretakers. These were the graves of the poor, indigent and unclaimed people.

Cindy Mordes displays a recovered metal grave marker - note the damaged surface

She and Jerry had been recruited by the caretakers and City of Fort Lauderdale to bring their metal detecting club (Pot Of Gold Metal Detecting Club) out to see if they could locate the metal grave-tags hammered into the top of pauper caskets. The club spread out over the lonely headstone-less graveyard, scanning the grounds for a signal. Many grave-tags and subsequent grave-sites were re-discovered thanks to this group back in 1984. Cindy found a few grave-tags that were so badly damaged the information on them was not recoverable. She said "I was so sad we could not make out the information on em'." She frowned "I wanted to take some of them home to clean and see if I could read them, but the caretakers said 'No' so I left them."

Back in the shop, we talked about the grave-marker recovery project a bit more. Jerry said "You are worried about what you might find, metal detecting in a graveyard and think about the bones in the box under your feet and wonder if they mind you walking over them." A good-sized Garrette Gold Pan suddenly fell off it's perch and clattered to the floor making us all jump. Cindy looked at us and said "Maybe we shouldn't be talking about this." Jerry looked at the fallen gold-pan and just said "Hmmm" The final count was a dozen or more graves that were found by the members of Pot Of Gold Metal Detecting Club, thanks to the hobby some lost souls were found and remembered. I don't know whatever happened to Jerry and Cindy, with 37-years and hundreds of miles between us. I can only hope they are as avid about the hobby as ever...I know a dozen souls that hope so too!

Detector Depth - Deep Thoughts

It happens after every Christmas, and the beginning of 2020 was no different. It was, and still is, the season of newbie dreams and in more cases than you would think, from old-timers with misconception about their shiny new electromagnetic magic wand. And the talk was about, as usual, metal detector depth. 

More than most hobbies, metal detecting has it's roots in science, with the practical aspects of ferromagnetics and the application of electrodynamics based in the physical sciences. Now, it's complicated...and the standard hobby VLF (very low frequency) metal detector is not, as many novice people seem to believe, a toy. It is a sophisticated instrument. As such, it's sophistication varies with the quality of the device, which usually translates into the price of the machine. Higher price, higher quality...not always so, but mostly so. Of course on social-media, a place much like Alice's Wonderland, you will run into comments like "It does not matter!!! You don't need an expensive machine...you can find just a much treasure with a cheap machine!" Of course these comments are usually made by the group with the cheapest machines, while adding another two inches of flattened beer cans to their growing stack of crushed tin.
But lets not get off track...something I do better a derailed train. The subject is DEPTH as always, when newbie's and surprisingly enough, experienced users, get into an argument over whose machine will go deeper!!! And the unsaid component of that thought; whose machine is better! 

The fact of the matter is a machine's maximum depth varies with the metal detector's control adjustments, amount of power output to the search coil, the type of search coil (concentric, wide-scan, monoloop, etc), the size of the search coil, the conductivity of the environment it is being used it (dry soil, wet soil, magnetic soil, dry sand, wet sand, in fresh water, in salt water, et al), the expertise of the operator, proper adjustment of the audio threshold, and, importantly, wearing headphones. Another interesting conversation I caught in some group somewhere were members who gave their considered opinion on NOT wearing headphones. You gotta love em' because listening for those quiet whispers is a key aspect of squeezing out extra "depth" from a signal, the difference between stomping mindlessly over a fringe target, or releasing an 1854 Barber quarter from it's dirty little prison. The reasons for NOT wearing headphones were "They are too hot!" in the summer, they were bulky and annoying. One person said they might wear em' if there were trucks going by! Do tell?

One thing I think I can credit social media with is the amazing amount of disinformation and the spread of poor practices by people who are dispersing it from another social media group somewhere else. When I see someone mention watching YouTube videos and Face Book group conversations being the deciding factor in a metal detector purchase, I shudder a bit. A lot of cash is at stake, and for someone who has no idea how to choose a metal detector, these sources can and do offer up a lot of biased baloney. Their best bet would be to find a legitimate metal detecting club first, and/or a legitimate metal detecting dealer and get advice directly from the experts...face to face.

Several dealers I can vouch for are Phil Myer's metal detectors in Florida's Tampa area http://www.myersdepot.com/ and Carolyn Harwick in the Orlando, Florida area https://www.kellycodetectors.com/ Call em' and get the the information that will put you on track and get deep into the hobby!