by Donna A. Trefry
Article reprinted with permission from Western & Eastern Treasures
Magazine
Published October, 1996
By the time I had purchased my first metal detector my
old elementary school was, itself, history. Therefore my very first detecting
venture would be to search its now vacant lot. I could still see the outline
of the building's foundation and knew that the entire two and a half story
brick structure had been bulldozed into its cellarhole.
..
Under every sweep of my coil, I imagined the old school lying there - like a giant corpse in its coffin.
Built in Portland, Maine during the 1890s and torn down in the 1960s, the school had its first chance to introduce me to history during the 1940s. History? I listened and remembered but never got the time frames straight. For all I knew the world started with George Washington and all other events were relegated to the primordial ooze. I supposed as Magellan sailed in large circles around this prehistoric puddle, Columbus fell off its edge onto Plymouth Rock then proceeded to plant Mayflowers in the forests of Massachusetts on his journey to Ohio! No?
The school tried its best to educate me and in the end would succeed; however, no one would have imagined the decades it would span!
The ghosts of history accompanied me as I surveyed the playground of my childhood. I remembered that the back half of the yard had been used exclusively by the boys while the girls were restricted to the front yard. (We weren't politically correct in the '40s.) I made my first search pattern in familiar territory,the girls' playground. The ghosts watched each sweep of my coil, evoking memories of times past. I knew just the spot where 50 years ago I had dug a "pot" for marbles. I determined where the girls stood to bounce tennis balls against the brick wall. I remembered the boys who crawled through a hole in the fence to rob the neighbor's crabapples. I knew exactly where the hole was - but the fence was gone! I found where the bicycle parking area had been and where the flagpole stood. Its granite footing was still there. None of those spots produced a good find. How disappointing to retrieve only junk and one modern quarter (next to the flagpole footing). Still a novice at detecting, I gave up that day and didn't come back for several years.
Armed with more detecting experience I returned to give the school another chance. Immediately I ventured into the previously taboo territory - the boys' playground! The ghosts made me uneasy as I entered the long ago forbidden zone, for even without the old schoolmarms on patrol, old habits die slowly.
Now, where to look? I had no idea where the boys had played or parked their bikes - or anything else for that matter. Where should I start? One quadrant of the yard was elevated and sat on an outcropping of granite. Maybe the digging would be shallow there and I would find things quickly?
Signals began to beep and sputter through my headset. Bonanza! Those boys of olden days sure had stuff to lose! What was this? Not a coin. Oh, dear, another disappointment. In my hand was the target - some yukky old car part. More junk would follow, then came reward. Finally a recovery would cause me to straighten up, look around and shout "Whoopie!" but no one would hear. I was alone. Alone with the ghosts and my Indianhead cent! Success at last. The old place had a goody for me. The Indianhead predated my highest hopes. I would find no fewer than eight Indianheads that day.
The phenomenon has happened to many detectorists - you hold an old coin in your hand and wonder, "Who held it last? In what kind of environment did that person live? What kind of clothing did he/she wear?" and so on. Curiosity finally takes over and you start searching the things that have always been available to you - history books! My research would lead to the same sources the schoolmarms used when developing their lessons in the long ago: The history of Portland (taught in grade 3); the history of Maine (taught in grade 4); United States history (taught in grade 5); and world history (grade 6). Would I have saved time and made recoveries sooner had I been a more willing young student?
Discussions with my older brother would reveal other first-hand details. He had attended the same school and would tell me where the boys played baseball (home plate was atop that granite outcrop where I recovered my first Indianhead cent.) He also knew where the sandbox had been located and which clump of trees had been designated "jail".
Now forearmed, I returned to the schoolyard often, finding "keepers" on every visit. There was the genuine, authentic, Hi Yo Silver, Lone Ranger Official Pocket Knife that came out of its resting place a gnarled blob of rusting steel, and the "Liberty Boy Salesman" pin. (Do any of you readers remember the World War II era Liberty Magazine?) My brother told me that the Liberty Magazine representative would recruit neighborhood boys as "agents" and then drive around the streets with the boys riding on the running boards.Who remembers running boards?
In the course of newer detectors, better search techniques, and deeper recoveries, I was to find things so old they seemed to defy the history of the school. I checked an 1878 county map and found the school's location. A closer look showed me that the map's design for the school was different from the building I had known, revealing another important detail. The maps were drawn in 1878 but the school wasn't built until 1898. There had been an earlier school at that site! Now I was really getting a history lesson from that place. Maybe that is why an 1840 presidential campaign token of W. H. Harrison was one of my recoveries; and the 1864 two-cent piece, the Seated Liberty dimes and Civil War Tokens?
I searched each year until I considered the site hunted out. Ha! That old schoolyard produces to this day! After 8 years of searching that site with all my detecting buddies, how do you explain my finding two standing liberty half dollars less than two inches deep in the middle of the lot? How did we all miss them? Believe it. No site is ever "hunted out"!
Click to see relics recovered.
Oh, how I hated history when I had to sit in a classroom and read about it. After fifty years, two college degrees and six metal detectors, the old school has claimed victory in my history education. Having touched history, I now enjoy its books. In them I find leads that take me to new searching spots where I recover more old coins and articles that need research. Not unlike the rings from a pebble dropped in a quiet pond, my ghosts have led me to research and recoveries reaching farther and farther out; from the neighborhood, to the city, to the state, to the nation! Yes, to the World.
Metal detecting that started in the old schoolyard has now taken me across the sea to England where my recoveries have reached back through twenty centuries to Roman times. I can now sit at home and hold two thousand years of history - in my hand. Would you like to know about English history and its ghosts? Well, maybe later.
Other articles by Donna
"Four Centuries of Treasure"
"Truly a Golden Age"
"The Mystery of the Seven-stoned Ring"
"Ghosts of History Guide the Searchcoil"
"Cache or Bust"
"Treasure Hunting Through the Internet"
"Where Gold Coins Grow on Trees"
Click to see coins recovered.