Digging vs. Excavating - Unpleasant Aspects

I've enjoyed the metal detecting hobby now for almost 60-years. Getting the signal, deciding what your option is regarding the target, basing the decision on your instrument's VDI and sound indications. If the decision is to remove the target from the ground, my least favorite part of the hobby comes into play; digging, or in the Archaeologists parlance, excavating. Now, as embarrassing as it is for an old detectorist to admit, I don't like digging, and never have! It is a critical part of the hobby, and I feel the public's eyes boring into the back of my head. But I still follow the detectorists code of ethics, open the ground like I'm doing an appendectomy, carefully opening the ground and probing gently, as not to damage either the target or the matrix it resides in. And closing it up like you'd never been there.

Keep it clean and professional, Dirt Dog!

In order to keep from getting kicked out of wherever you are hunting, your excavating skills must be of the first order and not that of a dog digging a bone! Dirt everywhere, including your hair, and a messy, obvious soil-colored blotch on a park swale, or a manicured private lawn. And to make it even worse, sometimes not even filled back in, giving the dig the appearance of a small meteor crater. And to make it even worse, leaving a piece of trash you brought back into the world, laying abandoned next to the unfilled hole in the ground! Why ever would people frown on equipment-laden, clanking and beeping detectorists' marring the landscape everywhere they go?

Well, many times experienced, and not so experienced, detectorists have a tendency to aim barbs at the newbies in the hobby regarding this open hole issue. And why not? They have committed the ultimate crime of becoming a participant in your hobby, the dogs!!!! Of course they are leaving those holes!!!! But hold on just a New York Minute, my friend! I am a club officer in the largest metal detecting club in the United States. We have many club hunts and private permission hunts, on occasion, where the club members get to hunt some literally undetected virgin property here in Central Florida. Our membership ranges from brand new detectorists, even children, to the middle-of-the road detectorists, as well as the old men and women of the hobby, as they shine the golden light of experience and metal detecting street-smarts over the unwashed wannabes.

But what's this? A club hunt where a club member twists their leg after stepping in a freshly dug hole on the hunt-field? But no newbies in sight, only hardened veterans of the metal detecting hobby? Another hunt, this time on the beach, with another sprained leg after stepping into another deeply-dug, unfilled hole in the sand? Again, another member quietly reports seeing not a newcomer, but a veteran hunter dig and leave the gaping hole without even looking back! The good practice goalposts of the hobby are slowly moving back across the line, into the realm of unacceptable and irresponsible behavior, by even some of the best of us. I need not sound the alarm again about the danger to the continued health of our hobby this sort of negligence represents; the eventual outlawing of any metal detecting anywhere! So let's all agree to agree to do better, and to self-police our own pastime before police, city officials and land owners do it for us. Cheers!

Missing the Obvious - Turner Beach, Captiva, Florida

 Sometimes the search for treasure can put blinders on the detectorists' hunting it, and mostly without you even realizing it. I know, I have run up against this time and time again while treasure hunting. My old friend Ed Pfau, now detecting the great beyond, having passed many years ago, used to say "Don't miss the forest for the trees!" We were both enthusiastic about the hobby of metal detecting while treasure hunting back in the 1970's and 1980's and were well-traveled about the state of Florida while seeking it. I still retained my pilot's license back then, before diabetes clipped my wings permanently. Living in Broward County, but loving the history of Florida's west coast, many weekends we would load the detectors, coolers, and gear into the baggage compartment of my plane, and head for the islands of Lee County; Sanibel and Captiva were our usual destinations. 

These islands both had small, grass (read "sand") fields which with our rather light load, we could just make it in and barely make it out! The Sanibel strip actually crossed a paved road, with automatic barriers that would drop and stop traffic by keying your aircraft radio on a specific frequency long enough for you to land, or takeoff. We were usually looking for treasure on Captiva island, and most usually at Blind Pass, as it was always sanded in and easily accessed. We had it on "good" authority, that pirate treasure had been buried along the banks of this pass, and we spent a lot of time searching for it. On the Captiva side of the pass was a small beach called Turner Beach, which was a nice little spot, but we rarely even found clad coins there, let alone much else. There was a small bath-house/restroom/changing room up on wooden stilts, maybe 3-feet off the ground. 

Passing by it or being a little too close, brought a slightly unpleasant, acrid smell, you usually found about public restrooms of the minimal maintenance/rarely cleaned kind. The floor of the bath-house consisted of 4x6 lumber with a 1/4 to 1/2 inch gap between the boards, letting shower water, as well as  even more unpleasant fluids and substances escape down onto the damp, weed-covered ground directly under the structure. We were not impressed and did our best to steer clear of this disgusting little bath-house. We spent many more trips on the opposite side of Turner Beach, hunting treasure in the sandy regions of Blind Pass. I was in my office at work back in Broward County one afternoon when Ed came in and tossed a copy of the day's newspaper on my desk. He had circled an article with a black magic marker. The reporter wrote about a young guy with a metal detector who had ducked under the bath-house, into the excrement-filled weeds and had recovered almost $17,000 worth of gold and silver jewelry (and this is at 1988 gold prices!) along with clusters of high-grade diamonds the bling had contained. I looked at Ed and he looked at me. He said "I STILL would not have hunted under there, even if I'd known!" We both laughed until we couldn't laugh any more!

Recognizing Treasure - It Ain't As Simple As It Looks!

 Many times, treasure hunters may not always recognize treasure AS treasure. Now this sounds like some type of contradiction, but it's not. And this maxim forms the core of this afternoon adventure so many years ago. My friend Kevin Reilly and I were not only metal detecting pals, but also diving buddies. SCUBA diving and metal detecting was usually our MO when we were exploring and treasure hunting in mid-1980's south Florida, One of our treasure hunting targets had been a good-sized, cloudy water "lake" called Crystal Lake, in Pompano Beach, which was anything BUT crystal in your wildest imagination. There was an an old bare-barked tree leaning over the water on the south-side of the lake with a long, knotted rope dangling from one of the few remaining spindly branches. High school and college kids swing on this rope all day and every day during summer, doing the "cannonball" into the murky waters, 

We figured there should be a mound of class rings and gold chains under the impact point, and we were gonna make a killing on all that lost stuff! With our diving gear on, we waded slowly into the disgusting water, and dipped under the surface. If you thought the lake looked bad from the surface you were in for an an even more unpleasant surprise under the surface. Horrid stringy water plants rose up from the bottom, a nasty sewage-color, like mutated seaweed, you could not avoid it. Turning on our dive lights, the surrounding water was filled with plant debris and bits of organic particles, making it difficult to see much of anything. We descended deeper onto the plant-choked bottom, and tried to use our metal detectors among the close-spaced weeds, the coils hanging up on anything and everything. The few signals we got were submerged beer cans, pop-tabs and assorted car parts. We surfaced and Kevin frowned, with weeds hanging off his head and wrapped around his regulator. "We are not gonna find $#@! here in this sewer and I don't know why I let you talk me into this...there is nothing here!"

I nodded and said "Yea, not much here and yuck, what a mess in here!" We submerged again and headed back to the place we had come in, me shinning the light toward the bottom, about 10-feet down. A flash of yellow paint slowed me down a second as I played the light-beam along the bottom where I had seen the object. I signaled Kevin I was going deeper, and headed toward the object. The light revealed a sorry-looking Fort Lauderdale News/Sun Sentinel newspaper machine, dirty and weed covered. I moved the beam around the bottom and found two more machines, then a dozen, then even more. About 30 newspaper machines were lying in a heap on the bottom!

It looked like somebody broke open the coin-box on a bunch of them, then tossed em' in the lake to cover up the crime. We were about to surface and head back to the truck with an interesting story to tell, when I noticed a small plaque on the front of the machine that mentioned that there was a $50 reward for returning the machine to the newspaper!!!!!! Kevin and I grabbed a few lift-bags from the truck and brought up machines 4 or 5 at a time, With the truck bed full of dripping wet newspaper machines, we drove directly to the newspapers downtown office in Fort Lauderdale and true to the plaque, the good Sun Sentinel people handed us $1500 cash, in 50-dollar bills, on bill for each machine returned. We had made $750 each, in addition to an interesting story to tell. A much better turn of events, Lesson learned; treasure is not always easy to recognize, so look closely,

Life Gets In The Way Sometimes

 It's been a while since I posted here, mostly due to a plethora of  severe systemic illness that keeps me running what, for all intents and purposes, is a small medical laboratory. Multiple daily blood tests, constant injections and handfuls of pharmaceuticals every other hour is the order of the day. Once a VA specialist asked me if I was tired of  all the injections I shot up with every day. When I nodded, she told me it was called "Diabetes Fatigue" which amazed me in the sense they had gone to all the trouble to formally name the irritation with all the drugs and procedures they foisted upon you. And recently, months ago, I had a good-sized cancer tumor removed from my colon, a stage-2 which was planning to kill me in short order. A good deal of my metal detecting hobby pals have already shoved off for the great well-tended park in the sky, and I miss them all. 

Here in the US I have been hoping we could develop a national database, much like England's amazing Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) whereas the American metal detecting hobbyist had a place to register and display artifacts recovered during detecting outings, many of which are historic and of interesting origins, However, the current social turmoil enveloping the U.S. has brought most intellectual endeavors to a standstill, instilling a certain opinion that it will be many years, if ever, before the country will recover to it's former level of enlightenment. 

At any rate, since this is my first post of 2021, six months late, I might add, I'll just let the blog take me where I will here on out, and thanks to all my friends and colleagues, and associates for putting up with me, Especially my wife Patti who has to endure my take and displeasure on everything and anything with quiet resignation. Patti also endures being the CFMDC's "model" for all my graphic projects and announcements for the club, as well as on video announcing club hunts and events. She has even acquiesced and done "voice-overs" for me on video projects where I had a cold or could not talk, which Patti point's out is "...very rare!"  Here she is in one club project...hi Patti!

Patti modeling our metal detecting hunt!

Patti before Photoshopping