4/9/24 Report - A Few Tips For Finding Old Sites. Seeing the Past Through Modern Tools and Memory.

 

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.

 Interesting view of the eclipse yesterday from the Treasure Coast.  It wasn't full, but I could see it using my sun telescopes sun filter.  You could also see it using something like a pinhole camera.  I'm late on this one.  Should have told you how to do it yesterday.

Anyhow, it was an interesting sight if you were set up to see it.  Maybe Alberto got some good photos.

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 My dear friend...  I call you that because anyone who travels this road with me, must be -  if not from the start, at least by the end. 

I was recently browsing the internet when Google Maps popped up on my  screen along with the name of the road I lived on as a youth and traveled probably a million times.  

Surprised to see that most familiar address appear so suddenly and surprisingly, I had to click on it.  

It had been decades since I actually went down that road, and ready for a visit, I switched to Street View and found myself at the top of the hill looking at my great grandparents' farm.  

There I was, back in time.

On one side of the road was the big two-story farmhouse where I stepped over the lazy farm dogs sleeping or just lounging on the front porch steps as I made my way to the front door with my bag of early-edition Sunday newspapers slung over my shoulder, as I did every Saturday evening as a twelve-year-old. The dogs didn't bother to move as I stepped over them.

I smiled at the sight of the big white barn on the other side of the road where the lights were always on until at least eleven o'clock at night because my grandfather's brother who still worked the farm was always late to milk the milk cows.  The late-night barn lights were recognized as a reflection of the ever-so-familiar slow and steady nature of the old farmer who worked at his own unyielding pace. Like so many times before, there I was going down the road that always took me home.  

Automatically I repeatedly clicked the arrow that took me down the road that I could travel in my sleep.  On the uphill side of the road was the familiar tree-lined wire fence. I passed the spring house where the cans of milk stayed cool in the troughs full of the spring water that once watered horses and weary travelers before the small half-submerged building was built to shelter the opening to the emerging spring.

On the left and down the hill behind the barn was the little pond where grandma took her little boy fishing and we sometimes caught a little sun fish or two.

Around a couple more bends and I see another spring house, as the Cooper farm and another white two-story farmhouse across from another big barn appeared.  

On my Saturday evening rounds, instead of lazy doga, an intimidating bull grazing between the road and the path to the front porch always greeted me and put a little extra speed in my step.  An impossibly small stake in the ground and a chain attached to a ring in the bull's nose was supposed to restrain the beast.  I was skeptical and I warily scampered past the creature as quickly and discretely as possible, tried to avoid showing my uneasiness to the bull or anyone else that might be around.

I could go on and on with the details of my life on that road, but I'm sure you would quickly grow bored and wonder why I'm on this trip. 

I know every inch, every tree and every bush on that dusty old road.  Around the bends and down the road there are more farms, and creeks and trees that kids climbed in the comfortable shade of summer, but I'll spare you all of that as pleasant as it is for me to remember.

Eventually the dusty road comes to my home - first grandma's house and then the house my dad built.  

I could see it all.  And I do mean all.  It is still there, stacked in time, day by day and year by year.

I can't tell you all of it, even though I want to.  Every spot I see is meaningful.  

We were young.  Me, my friends, and even my parents.  We played here and there.  We became.  We left.  

Most are gone now.  Mom and dad are gone.  The neighbor kids, my friends, are mostly gone, but at the same time, I can still see them back in time.  

A neighbor boy, one year ahead of me, walked me down that road on my first day of school.  In our flannel shirts and blue jeans, a six- and seven-year-old made the journey they'd repeat nearly every school day for years.  I remember it, and my mother brought it up a few months ago, not long before she passed.

We played in the shade of the trees in summer.  We picked and smelled peppermint leaves in the valley by the creek.  We climbed trees and haystacks we weren't supposed to climb.  We dug tunnels and made forts.  And in the winter rode our sleds and yankee jumpers down the long hills and trudged back up to do it all again.  

I traveled down that familiar road in street view a couple times before I stopped and looked more closely at the computer screen.  I noticed something that shocked me.  I noticed the road was paved.  Much of what I was seeing was not actually on the computer screen. 

I went back one more time.  I looked again at the old farm at the top of the hill, and saw the farmhouse was now darkened with age.  I saw the tractor barn was now nothing more than a pile of old boards on the ground.  Things had changed.  The dogs weren't on the porch and the bull was no longer in front of the house.  Now I was just looking at a picture on the computer screen and I saw how things had changed.

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If you stuck with me through all of that, you might be wondering what all that has to do with metal detecting, so I'll tell you.  In brief - no one knows an area better than the old folk who grew up there.  They know like no one else, what WAS there and what happened there.  But not only do they know what they did and saw, but they also know what their parents and grandparents told them and a lot of what was there generations before they were born. 

I know where my dad found arrowheads when he planted potatoes as a child.  I know where the Indians camped on the hill.  I know where the ball field was.  I know where my grandfather attended a one-room schoolhouse.  I know where buildings that no longer exist were.  I know where there were several old bottle dumps.  The people who live in that area now don't know about a lot of that.

The first couple of times I went down that old road in Google Street View, I was seeing things as they were sixty and seventy years in the past.  At first I didn't even notice that the road is paved.  I didn't notice a lot of what had changed on my first trip or two in street view, but when I went back and looked at what had changed,  I could still see some subtle signs of where things were.  I could see the depression in the ground where the old dump was even though it is now covered with weeds and the surrounding area is much different.  There are still many telltale signs of what was once there. but it required looking carefully.

To sum it up, here are my recommendations: talk to the old folks who grew up in the area you are interested in.  And study street view for any clues.  I did a post not too long on how to use Google Maps for treasure hunting.  Riding around in street view is one way.

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Surf Chart From SurfGuru.com.

We are having some big tides as you'd guess by the moon and sun being aligned as they are.

Good hunting,

Treasureguide@comcast.net