By Mary Loden, Of the News-Tribune
Two local boys had themselves a bit of a real treasure hunt this summer and had the opportunity to meet the mapmaker and treasure hider when he returned home this past week for his 30th class reunion.
On July 12th Dennis and Gloria Johanson, who live at 340 Sixth Street S.W., had six of their grandchildren over for a visit.
A favorite place to play and explore at Grandmas is in the 4-foot high crawl space beneath the house. Although the kids had been down there many times, on this day they saw something they had never seen before.
McCaully Johanson, 12, and his cousin, Nick Lemmon, 9, noticed a small, yellow tin box setting on the ledge of the foundation of the home.
Curious to see what they had found they took the box out to the garage where there was more light to see. “On the outside of the old pellet tin was printed ‘Bruce Smidt, 1976, OPEN,'” said Gloria, who finally found out two weeks after the discovery.
“Inside was a plastic vial the size of a pencil around with a cork closing it and a note inside. This note read, ‘Go to the West bathroom, the North wall and beside the toilet paper holder and a drawing that showed two tiles over and one down,'” Gloria said. The note was signed, “1976, Bruce Smidt, 16 years old.”
“We used a corkscrew for a wine bottle to get it (the cork) out and it broke,” Nick said excitedly as he relayed what they did after finding the box and vial.
“We didn't want to tell anybody, so we didn't tell Grandma,” McCaully said.
“When we read the note we were confused and didn't know what it meant,” Nick said.
A few weeks went by after the discovery and Gloria said Nick and McCaully called her at work and asked if it was okay to take one of the bathroom tiles off the wall to see if they could find something.
“The drawing had no directions on it as to which way to hold the note to find the tile, so they didn't find anything,” said Gloria, who had finally been let in on the secret.
But Nick didn't want to give up and a few days later he showed the map to his grandma, who decided the boys went in the wrong direction. Turning the note a different way they started tapping the tiles drawn on the map until they found one that sounded hollow.
“So Nick started trying to get that tile off. There behind it was a hole cut into the sheet rock and something round wrapped in masking tape was in the hole,” Gloria said. “Nick took it out and started unwrapping it. Once all the masking tape was unwound, whatever was inside was wrapped individually in aluminum foil. So Nick started unwrapping the foil. Inside were all bi-centennial coins (1776-1976), one silver dollar, one 50-cent piece and two quarters. The coins were not discolored after spending 32 years in the wall since Bruce had wrapped them in foil. He obviously had known what he was doing.”
Gloria said she handed the vial and note to Ron Smidt, Bruce's father, one day at church and he was stunned and curious and said he couldn't wait to call Bruce to find out what it was all about.
Standing in the kitchen of his former home, Bruce Smidt, now an attorney living in Phoenix, Ariz., just looked at the things the boys had found and shook his head. “I don't remember the map,” he said with a smile. “When I heard (from Dad) I did have recollection of the tile in the bathroom and I thought maybe it was bi-centennial coins.”
Actually, Bruce's 9-year-old son, Jared, was just as excited as Nick and McCaully and kept pumping his dad for information. “He wanted to hypnotize me to help me remember better,” Bruce said.
Even though he can't recall the event Bruce just grinned and said, “It's something I would do.”
Nick said he wanted to split the “treasure” evenly since McCaully found the tin box and he found the coins, but there wasn't a full set for each of them.
Gloria said her husband, Grandpa Denny, pitched in bi-centennial 50-cent piece he had and Don Wells, a coin collector, gladly contributed a bi-centennial silver dollar.
McCaully isn't sure what he wants to do with his coins yet but Nick said, “I'm going to save mine and give them to my grandchildren.”
Story created Aug 12, 2008 - 11:53:39 CDT.
