Traveling Back In Time – Part 1

My brother Bill and I grew up in a very small Midwestern town, back in the 50’s and 60’s.

One weekend in 1972, Bill (who had moved to a larger City after graduation) came back to our folk’s house for a weekend visit. When he arrived, he told me that he had rented a metal detector. I’d read about them in Popular Mechanics magazine, but had never seen one in action. With little coaxing, we decided to go to the local park to see what might have been lost over the years. In anticipation of a bountiful harvest, we grabbed what tools we thought we might need…one of mom’s old butcher knives to dig the holes, and one of our dad’s nail aprons to carry our coins.

Before getting to the park, we stopped by the Mayor’s house and asked if we could metal detect it. Assuring him that we would respect the property, he gave us the green light and we headed on to the park. Since Bill had rented the detector, he informed me that he would be the one at the controls, while I dug the holes. How could I argue with that logic? After all, he is my older brother. With visions of silver dollars and gold coins rolling around in my head, I was disappointed when the first dozen holes revealed nothing but nails, bottle caps, tin foil and other assorted pieces of trash. But before long, we started finding coins. 

For those who haven’t been in the hobby as long as I have, keep in mind that the discrimination characteristics of those detectors were not nearly as advanced as they are on most detectors today. In fact the one Bill had rented only differentiated targets as either metal or mineral. Basically, the audio pitch varied when he passed the coil over anything metal. So we really didn’t know what the target was going to be until I dug it up. 

Anyway, I still remember detecting around that park for hours, with Bill swinging the coil and me on my hands and knees, digging (and filling) all of the holes. When I dug up each target, I would put the coins in one side of the nail apron and the trash in the other. We dug so many targets that I must have dumped the “trash” side of that pouch at least a half-dozen times. And I know we had to unload the “coin” side at least twice. The reason those memories stand out so well is because that is the day I earned the nickname “Digger”, a nickname that has stuck with me through the years.

Eventually, after digging literally hundreds of targets, Bill said “Digger, do you want to run the detector while I dig a few holes?” Without hesitation, (and ignoring the fact he had once again referred to me as Digger), I said “You Bet”! Having watched him detect for the past several hours, I began swinging the coil at a steady back and forth pace, being careful to not bump the coil on the ground. Believe it or not, within the first few sweeps, I scanned over my very first target. Bill stayed true to his word and dug the hole, revealing a beautiful Walking Liberty Half Dollar. We were both absolutely stunned! I took it from his hand and stood there wide-eyed. There is no doubt in my mind that finding such a beautiful silver coin as my first “recovery” is when I realized that this was going to be a great hobby.

For the record…my love for the hobby has stayed with me much longer than the silver half dollar. Since Bill had paid the $25.00 rental on the detector, technically (as he explained it) the half dollar was his to keep. I have to admit, however, he offered to let me keep the half dollar if I were willing to reimburse him for half of the $25.00 rental fee. Well, I didn’t have the $12.50 he needed for half the rent. So when he drove back to the city that evening, he took the metal detector and all of the coins we had found, including the Walking Liberty half dollar. But this story doesn’t end here. To find out how things eventually “worked out”, read my next TT Blog Post, Part Two of “Traveling Back in Time”.