-=WARNING!=- Set coffee down on a flat, hard surface away from flailing arms!* 
Well...no paycheck this week. The metal didn't come for the outside work, and the electrician didn't finish his job, so there's no inside work either... hence, an MD week.
The boss an' I hit a couple huge cornfields on Monday & Tuesday and got a few wheaties, an IH, and some clad, but yesterday I went by myself, wanting to hit an old Grange hall that we seen on the way to the cornfields. I was there maybe 20 minutes, but it was all overgrown out back with grass that, assuredly, never got cut, and it was all puffy-matted (?)... so I headed towards home to try a couple other places. Something else we had spotted on this job ride was a rock wall near the river that I wanted to try, but there wasn't any signs of a homestead or any signals at all there for that matter, so down the road I went.
Pulling into town, but not wanting to come home empty-handed, I stopped at a place at an intersection right in town where there used to be a roadhouse-type bar (next to a laundrymat and a shopping mall across the street) that has been closed for a couple years now (up the road a couple hundred feet there's a MacDonald's and down the road a couple hundred feet there's a union meeting hall built for the local mill workers).
I figured, "well, at least I'll get some clad for the tumbler"... and I figured I'd get plenty here, having been a bar, and before that, a bike/motercycle dealership. I was only there for about 15 minutes before I got a definate coin signal 3½ inches deep. Cut a plug, flipped it out, pinpointed dead center of the very bottom of the plug, and one gloved thumb popped 'er out of that dark, cold, nasty place it'd been in for so long.
When I first got it in my hand, it looked to be a little too big for a quarter, so my first thought was, "Cool... I think I jus' found my second half dollar," but when I looked a little closer and cleaned it better, it seemed to be a little bit small for a half dollar.
Now I'm thinkin', "Naw... this can't be a large cent right in the middle of town..." and I couldn't focus on the markings right away, so I half-trotted to the truck for my jeweler's loop.
Now here's the funny part...
All this time I had been detecting, I was noticing some guy standing in front of the laundrymat, scrutinizingly staring... watching... waiting (as one stares in a microscope at creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water) for me to show some kind of sign of digging up something good (whether he was a detectorists or not, I don't know... and I still don't). He and a lady was outside at a picnic table smoking a cigarette... probably waiting for their laundry to dry or something.
Anyway, behind the cover of my shades, he couldn't see my eyes as I glanced to see if he was still curious and still watching.
Finally focusing through the loop eye, I made out the distinct letters on the reverse... "O-N-E* C-E-N-T".
Well, sir... that's all it took. I immediately forgot all about the lurker's eyes, and my butt started to wiggle (smiling, facing the ground with my eyes shut tight)... just like Buckwheat of the Little Rascals when he finally caught the duck that was dragging a dollar.
As my headphones worked their way to down around my neck, I was progressin' up to the Cha-Cha... an' by the time I got back to my machine lying near the hole, I was doin' the Hully-Gully!!!
A trucker haulin' logs laid a long blast of his horn when he spotted me boogin', and I waved to him like I was my great-grandfather setting foot on Ellis Island for the first time.
Funny... with all that hoo-scowin', you'd think that guy at the laundrymat would've walked the 50 feet to see what I had dug up, but he never did (probably thought he'd catch something, huh?)
Now... the coin:
If you can see it (I put a coat of extra-virgin olive oil on it, so it's pretty dark), the stamp across the top of the face says, "F M", and along the neckline, you can see the stamp of "6 9"... and the coin is perfunctly concaved from when it was struck with the dies... as if it was on a soft surface when struck. I tried searching for a discription in my United States Token's book and my Hard Times Tokens book, but couldn't find anything definate. Oh, well... so what, Right?
Well, there's my story, an' I'm stickin' to it...!*
Happy hunting, all...! (Ain't this a great hobby?)
Krom (Keeps Resurrecting Old Money)
Well...no paycheck this week. The metal didn't come for the outside work, and the electrician didn't finish his job, so there's no inside work either... hence, an MD week.
The boss an' I hit a couple huge cornfields on Monday & Tuesday and got a few wheaties, an IH, and some clad, but yesterday I went by myself, wanting to hit an old Grange hall that we seen on the way to the cornfields. I was there maybe 20 minutes, but it was all overgrown out back with grass that, assuredly, never got cut, and it was all puffy-matted (?)... so I headed towards home to try a couple other places. Something else we had spotted on this job ride was a rock wall near the river that I wanted to try, but there wasn't any signs of a homestead or any signals at all there for that matter, so down the road I went.
Pulling into town, but not wanting to come home empty-handed, I stopped at a place at an intersection right in town where there used to be a roadhouse-type bar (next to a laundrymat and a shopping mall across the street) that has been closed for a couple years now (up the road a couple hundred feet there's a MacDonald's and down the road a couple hundred feet there's a union meeting hall built for the local mill workers).
I figured, "well, at least I'll get some clad for the tumbler"... and I figured I'd get plenty here, having been a bar, and before that, a bike/motercycle dealership. I was only there for about 15 minutes before I got a definate coin signal 3½ inches deep. Cut a plug, flipped it out, pinpointed dead center of the very bottom of the plug, and one gloved thumb popped 'er out of that dark, cold, nasty place it'd been in for so long.
When I first got it in my hand, it looked to be a little too big for a quarter, so my first thought was, "Cool... I think I jus' found my second half dollar," but when I looked a little closer and cleaned it better, it seemed to be a little bit small for a half dollar.
Now I'm thinkin', "Naw... this can't be a large cent right in the middle of town..." and I couldn't focus on the markings right away, so I half-trotted to the truck for my jeweler's loop.
Now here's the funny part...
All this time I had been detecting, I was noticing some guy standing in front of the laundrymat, scrutinizingly staring... watching... waiting (as one stares in a microscope at creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water) for me to show some kind of sign of digging up something good (whether he was a detectorists or not, I don't know... and I still don't). He and a lady was outside at a picnic table smoking a cigarette... probably waiting for their laundry to dry or something.
Anyway, behind the cover of my shades, he couldn't see my eyes as I glanced to see if he was still curious and still watching.
Finally focusing through the loop eye, I made out the distinct letters on the reverse... "O-N-E* C-E-N-T".
Well, sir... that's all it took. I immediately forgot all about the lurker's eyes, and my butt started to wiggle (smiling, facing the ground with my eyes shut tight)... just like Buckwheat of the Little Rascals when he finally caught the duck that was dragging a dollar.
As my headphones worked their way to down around my neck, I was progressin' up to the Cha-Cha... an' by the time I got back to my machine lying near the hole, I was doin' the Hully-Gully!!!
A trucker haulin' logs laid a long blast of his horn when he spotted me boogin', and I waved to him like I was my great-grandfather setting foot on Ellis Island for the first time.
Funny... with all that hoo-scowin', you'd think that guy at the laundrymat would've walked the 50 feet to see what I had dug up, but he never did (probably thought he'd catch something, huh?)
Now... the coin:
If you can see it (I put a coat of extra-virgin olive oil on it, so it's pretty dark), the stamp across the top of the face says, "F M", and along the neckline, you can see the stamp of "6 9"... and the coin is perfunctly concaved from when it was struck with the dies... as if it was on a soft surface when struck. I tried searching for a discription in my United States Token's book and my Hard Times Tokens book, but couldn't find anything definate. Oh, well... so what, Right?
Well, there's my story, an' I'm stickin' to it...!*
Happy hunting, all...! (Ain't this a great hobby?)
Krom (Keeps Resurrecting Old Money)
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