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DIGS O' THE DAY (2008-08-24): HENRY FORD'S LOST CHILDREN
lordmarcovan
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DIGS O' THE DAY (2008-08-24): HENRY FORD'S LOST CHILDREN
This previously-unpublished outing was my only summer detector outing for 2008, and predictably, it was too hot. I ended up with sunburn on my neck.
The finds were not that great so I never wrote this up as a "Digs O' The Day" episode until just now, after posting my Halloween story. Since I took plenty of pictures on that August outing, though, I thought I'd give it a quick recap.
My friend Ty got us permission to detect at an old Victorian house in Old Town Brunswick. It looked promising.
When we rolled up, the most prominent feature of the front yard was a moldering old 1956 or '57 Thunderbird, partially mummified under a cover that was peeling away. Ty said the folks who previously occupied the house used to work on cars there.
It was plain to see they had liked Fords. A 1980s-vintage smaller-sized LTD or Crown Victoria was being swallowed by a wild grapevine. I tried a couple of the grapes- muscadines- and they weren't bad at all. You have to pick the really dark purple ones that almost look black, though. Ty picked one that was not quite so dark and popped it into his mouth, whereupon his eyes bugged out and his face puckered into all kinds of hilarious contortions, much to my amusement. I guess it was pretty tart.
We got down to the business of detecting, but it was disappointing. I did manage to find a 1935 Wheat cent, but that was about it for older coins. There has to be some silver or older stuff in the yard, but we didn't find it. At least we weren't badly plagued by old stray auto parts in the ground, except for a few bolts and wires and such.
Ty found a Wheat cent, too, but that was about it. We were sweating and beginning to get quite uncomfortable in the heat.
Behind the house, almost totally hidden by the brush, another dead car rotted away. This one was so badly disintegrated as to be pretty much unrecognizable. A vague hunch tells me it was probably once a Ford, though.
On the south side of the house, beneath some tall bamboo plants, there were even more cars. Yep, you guessed it- Fords. There was a full-sized Crown Vic beside the house, and inside the garage there was an old 1930-something Model A. Actually, the car under the blue tarp was a black sheep in the flock of Fords- it turned out to be a Cadillac.
With the sun and our boredom taking their toll, we left and went on out to St. Simons Island. In one place, Ty noticed they'd cleared some woods for new construction, so we checked the site out. It proved to have obviously had an old building on the site- there was lots of old brick and glass in the dirt. Though the vanished building had obviously disappeared long ago and been overgrown by woods prior to the recent bulldozing, I was able to determine that it was not much older than the about the mid-1900s, from the types of glass and junk found in the immediate area. Still, it was in a part of the island that had been occupied continuously since the 1700s, so we checked it out. Even though the traces of the old ruined building were not that old, I knew they were old enough to potentially have some silver coins, too. Unfortunately the buried trash, mostly old tin cans, was pretty awful, and I got sick of it pretty fast.
We moved off away from where the old building had been and the signals diminished greatly. I decided to focus on this "cleaner" area, though, since any earlier relics would be easier to find if I didn't have to dig through a layer of 1940s trash to get to them. Pretty much all that turned up were bullets, which wasn't that surprising since the area had been heavily wooded and visited only by hunters for the past 50 years or more.
The only interesting find I got was a small button (actually, I think it is a snap fastener), with an anchor and crown motif on it. It's pretty old, but almost certainly dates to the 20th century.
It wasn't that great an outing, but most of the time the heat and humidity sapped my enthusiasm. Summer is my usual "off season" when it comes to outdoor activities like detecting. Oh, well- at least we got out for a little while.
~RWS
This previously-unpublished outing was my only summer detector outing for 2008, and predictably, it was too hot. I ended up with sunburn on my neck.
The finds were not that great so I never wrote this up as a "Digs O' The Day" episode until just now, after posting my Halloween story. Since I took plenty of pictures on that August outing, though, I thought I'd give it a quick recap.
My friend Ty got us permission to detect at an old Victorian house in Old Town Brunswick. It looked promising.
When we rolled up, the most prominent feature of the front yard was a moldering old 1956 or '57 Thunderbird, partially mummified under a cover that was peeling away. Ty said the folks who previously occupied the house used to work on cars there.
It was plain to see they had liked Fords. A 1980s-vintage smaller-sized LTD or Crown Victoria was being swallowed by a wild grapevine. I tried a couple of the grapes- muscadines- and they weren't bad at all. You have to pick the really dark purple ones that almost look black, though. Ty picked one that was not quite so dark and popped it into his mouth, whereupon his eyes bugged out and his face puckered into all kinds of hilarious contortions, much to my amusement. I guess it was pretty tart.
We got down to the business of detecting, but it was disappointing. I did manage to find a 1935 Wheat cent, but that was about it for older coins. There has to be some silver or older stuff in the yard, but we didn't find it. At least we weren't badly plagued by old stray auto parts in the ground, except for a few bolts and wires and such.
Ty found a Wheat cent, too, but that was about it. We were sweating and beginning to get quite uncomfortable in the heat.
Behind the house, almost totally hidden by the brush, another dead car rotted away. This one was so badly disintegrated as to be pretty much unrecognizable. A vague hunch tells me it was probably once a Ford, though.
On the south side of the house, beneath some tall bamboo plants, there were even more cars. Yep, you guessed it- Fords. There was a full-sized Crown Vic beside the house, and inside the garage there was an old 1930-something Model A. Actually, the car under the blue tarp was a black sheep in the flock of Fords- it turned out to be a Cadillac.
With the sun and our boredom taking their toll, we left and went on out to St. Simons Island. In one place, Ty noticed they'd cleared some woods for new construction, so we checked the site out. It proved to have obviously had an old building on the site- there was lots of old brick and glass in the dirt. Though the vanished building had obviously disappeared long ago and been overgrown by woods prior to the recent bulldozing, I was able to determine that it was not much older than the about the mid-1900s, from the types of glass and junk found in the immediate area. Still, it was in a part of the island that had been occupied continuously since the 1700s, so we checked it out. Even though the traces of the old ruined building were not that old, I knew they were old enough to potentially have some silver coins, too. Unfortunately the buried trash, mostly old tin cans, was pretty awful, and I got sick of it pretty fast.
We moved off away from where the old building had been and the signals diminished greatly. I decided to focus on this "cleaner" area, though, since any earlier relics would be easier to find if I didn't have to dig through a layer of 1940s trash to get to them. Pretty much all that turned up were bullets, which wasn't that surprising since the area had been heavily wooded and visited only by hunters for the past 50 years or more.
The only interesting find I got was a small button (actually, I think it is a snap fastener), with an anchor and crown motif on it. It's pretty old, but almost certainly dates to the 20th century.
It wasn't that great an outing, but most of the time the heat and humidity sapped my enthusiasm. Summer is my usual "off season" when it comes to outdoor activities like detecting. Oh, well- at least we got out for a little while.
~RWS
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Comments
It's rather sad to note that since I started doing these longwinded writeups with lots of photos, I haven't really found anything all that spectacular! Sure, there have been a few good finds. But all of my colonial-era coin finds and most of my earlier, pre-Civil War relics were found in the era before I documented each outing.
These stories are a fun way for me to relive the experience later.
I only hope to have some more exciting ones to add before I get too fat or too old to swing the detector.
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.-Albert Einstein
What? You don't like 1955 T-Birds? Made from "55 to 57" ;-)
Oh...Your T-Bird is from 1957 :-)
Jerry
<< <i>What? You don't like 1955 T-Birds? Made from "55 to 57" ;-)
Oh...Your T-Bird is from 1957 :-) >>
I forgot about the '55s.
Now here comes the part where you can tell me how you distinguished that one as a '57...?
-Randy Newman
OK...55 & 56 have a stright bumper - across -
The 57 has a drop center bumper --__--
;-)
Jerry
I figgered it had to be something to do with the headlights or grille or bumpers, since that's about all you can see of that one in my picture.