I was still debating with myself at 6 am: go, or not go. I figured I was a day late for the best metal detecting for Spanish loot, Saturday would have been the day, and it was a 2¼ hours drive to Fort Pierce from my hidey hole in west Broward. What the hell.
I went up i95 to save on tolls. As I passed beyond mid-Palm Beach county, I entered country I hadn't seen in 20 years. I spied an 8pt buck and doe on the side of 95 by a fence under a tree in Martin county, where i95 veers west into the hinterlands. A few miles north of there I noted all the new building in the pinelands; shopping centers, McMansion communities, a Home Depot, church spires, all new, clean, gleaming, thirty miles from the coast. St Lucie has urban sprawl.
Ft. Pierce was a revelation. It has a small old section with at least one property I'd like to detect. Then I crossed the Indian River, to Hutchinson Island, saw many pricey new condos, and a thriving public park by the jetty, full of people by 9 am on a bright, windy morning, slightly cooler than it had been, probably around 70°. Some intersections were still underwater from Sandy. I turned south on A1A.
I recognized the road from Google's street view, as if I'd already traveled on it. So many places in Dade and Broward are changed in just one year you can't rely on the google street views, old buildings disappear that fast, and new sidewalks destroy old grass swales just moments before you get there. What is this mania to install sidewalks and curbs?
I pulled in at Green Turtle beach on a short dirt road to the dirt parking. It was all quite firm. The end of the walkover was buried in sand, and then I saw it, the most magnificent sight of the day as it would turn out, huge breakers curling and crashing before a narrow beach, low 3-4 foot dunes cut away, big puddles back inside the dunes with cut but fairly shallow drainage trails down to the lower beach.
I had a DFX 300 I'd bought off a guy on Craigslist a week earlier for $350. I'd had no time to play with the programming, so i just chose the factory coin and jewelry program, and was surprised to find it useless in the salt, so I switched it to all metal. I checked from the water to the back dunes, then north and south for a couple hundred yards on this legendary stretch of treasure coast, called the "colored beach," ostensibly for all the gold found there. I found a couple of nickels, and an aluminum can top.
Approaching the walkover on my way back, I saw a shirtless fat man sitting down with a dual field White's PI and a hand scoop that looked brand-new. He was about my age (50's) or bit younger, sandy hair but mostly bald, and a flushed face. Turns out he was in fact a newbie, having recently moved to the island. He needed a ride back up A1A. He usually got rides from a friend for $25(!), but he had bailed (in fact, it's just a couple miles). I said "sure." Then he offered me $5 for gas, then $5 more to stop at the quicky mart right nearby. I felt almost taking advantage, but I felt I needed the $10. Besides, I was saving him 15. His name was Alan, and his people were French by way of Acadia orignally.
A huge, late model SUV with surf boards on top parked while we were walking down off the walkover, and a very, tall square-shouldered Germanic looking young man in his late twenties who would have made a fine Grenadier back in the day, and a short, generic, affable white guy about 40 exited the front of the vehicle, and two attractive young women got out the back. When they came back a few minutes later, the shorter fella handed Alan his hand-scoop. That reminded me of when I left a scoop one morning in a bar on Ft Lauderdale beach. Later that day, a friend of mine walked into the same bar with his metal detector, and someone handed it to him.
The surfers were leaving, so I asked them if they weren't going to surf here. He said it looked a bit choppy, and they were going to check further south. I was going north, of course, and that was by far the best looking surf I was to see that day.
I had to recross Indian River to get to the north side of the inlet, and into Pepper Park. There I met a plump, blond woman about my age, walking up the beach swinging a meter back and forth, about 6" above the sand. Her meter box said "American" but that was all of the graphics that I could see. We chatted. She informed me she had found a Mercury dime near the south jetty earlier in the morning.
Here again, I found the dunes cut, but a lot of sand carried up the beach.
A few minutes later, I was digging a signal in the surf with my hand scoop (having switched detectors to a Sea Hunter II PI). It was a small signal, and the surf kept filling the hole. So, when the water went out, I dug furiously, dumping the sand to the side, hoping I'd have time to locate a signal in the spoil pile and recover it before the next wave. I did find the signal in the spoil, but a wave washed it away. When I looked up, I realized that a black paddle with a curved, red blade was sitting up on the sand, and was being ignored by the few folks nearby. I trotted over, and discovered it was an adjustable kevlar/graphite paddle board paddle, and it seemed to be in pretty good shape. I was thinking it could pay for my trip today.
I left Pepper Park and drove north to Rio Mar. I was finding out why they call it the Treasure Coast...the multi-million dollar homes and condos. Romney-Ryan signs were everywhere. One was planted right next to a sign warning that a beach entrance was private, no trespassing. I sort of wanted to stop and take a picture.
I'd seen on Google that there had been a lot of development on the island, nonetheless, I was disappointed by how much like Boca Raton it looked. And these affluent folks seemed riled up. There were a great many "Fire Obama!"signs confronting the poor tourists like myself using the few public beach accesses with their tiny parking lots. Considering the romance associated with this coast in my mind, it was distressing to find it so thoroughly colonized by the one percent.
In fact, the 5 parking spots at rio Mar were taken, and the residential streets nearbywere thoroughly posted. So I went on up to Corrigans. Here the lot was closed, for unknown reasons, leave your imagination free rein. However, folks were parked in the turn lane and over the curb without being ticketed, so I joined them.
Here the dunes towered over me, at least 8-10' tall. They were cut, and the sand on the lower beach was firm. Numbers of detectorists worked the beach at this late hour. I pulled a memorial cent from the bottom of the dune. I could see pieces of plastic down there too. At another spot in the dune, I pulled out what I think was a square nail.
I didn't find anything else interesting. I met another detectorist who informed me he had met a fellow who'd found something old made of brass. Someone else, he'd heard, had pulled a whole Chinese teacup from the dune. And there was a tale going around that a gold coin had been found.
I didn't fall asleep on the ride home. I was listening to a program on the public radio station from the treasure coast (88.9)about what money really is. Apparently, Greenspan has said that the money supply is infinite. Apparently, our national debt is illusory. We have what is called a “fiat” economy - money is created by fiat, electronically, by little gnomes at the Federal Reserve. The reason Greece is in trouble, is they don't create their own money, The European Central Bank makes the Euro, and Greece is merely one of the users. Which is why they can go bankrupt, and we can't. And this is also why creditors can bully them and force them to pay more interest on their loans. Japan, on the other hand, prints its own currency, the yen. They have twice the debt to production ratio of the United States (they:200%, we: 100%), yet they borrow money easily, and at the same rate the US does...about 1% on long-term loans. This is because they create their own money, and creditors know that there is no risk they won't be paid back. The only question for them, and for us, is who gets the money...and when.
And this, apparently, is something that neither Washington Republicans nor Democrats acknowledge, even the ones who understand it.
So, why does the US government borrow so much money according to these accounting anthropologists? Surprising answer to that one. If anyone is interested in what they say that is, let me know.
Sadly, the radio signal faded at around Palm Beach Gardens, before they got to the part about how one can get more of this funny money.
I went up i95 to save on tolls. As I passed beyond mid-Palm Beach county, I entered country I hadn't seen in 20 years. I spied an 8pt buck and doe on the side of 95 by a fence under a tree in Martin county, where i95 veers west into the hinterlands. A few miles north of there I noted all the new building in the pinelands; shopping centers, McMansion communities, a Home Depot, church spires, all new, clean, gleaming, thirty miles from the coast. St Lucie has urban sprawl.
Ft. Pierce was a revelation. It has a small old section with at least one property I'd like to detect. Then I crossed the Indian River, to Hutchinson Island, saw many pricey new condos, and a thriving public park by the jetty, full of people by 9 am on a bright, windy morning, slightly cooler than it had been, probably around 70°. Some intersections were still underwater from Sandy. I turned south on A1A.
I recognized the road from Google's street view, as if I'd already traveled on it. So many places in Dade and Broward are changed in just one year you can't rely on the google street views, old buildings disappear that fast, and new sidewalks destroy old grass swales just moments before you get there. What is this mania to install sidewalks and curbs?
I pulled in at Green Turtle beach on a short dirt road to the dirt parking. It was all quite firm. The end of the walkover was buried in sand, and then I saw it, the most magnificent sight of the day as it would turn out, huge breakers curling and crashing before a narrow beach, low 3-4 foot dunes cut away, big puddles back inside the dunes with cut but fairly shallow drainage trails down to the lower beach.
I had a DFX 300 I'd bought off a guy on Craigslist a week earlier for $350. I'd had no time to play with the programming, so i just chose the factory coin and jewelry program, and was surprised to find it useless in the salt, so I switched it to all metal. I checked from the water to the back dunes, then north and south for a couple hundred yards on this legendary stretch of treasure coast, called the "colored beach," ostensibly for all the gold found there. I found a couple of nickels, and an aluminum can top.
Approaching the walkover on my way back, I saw a shirtless fat man sitting down with a dual field White's PI and a hand scoop that looked brand-new. He was about my age (50's) or bit younger, sandy hair but mostly bald, and a flushed face. Turns out he was in fact a newbie, having recently moved to the island. He needed a ride back up A1A. He usually got rides from a friend for $25(!), but he had bailed (in fact, it's just a couple miles). I said "sure." Then he offered me $5 for gas, then $5 more to stop at the quicky mart right nearby. I felt almost taking advantage, but I felt I needed the $10. Besides, I was saving him 15. His name was Alan, and his people were French by way of Acadia orignally.
A huge, late model SUV with surf boards on top parked while we were walking down off the walkover, and a very, tall square-shouldered Germanic looking young man in his late twenties who would have made a fine Grenadier back in the day, and a short, generic, affable white guy about 40 exited the front of the vehicle, and two attractive young women got out the back. When they came back a few minutes later, the shorter fella handed Alan his hand-scoop. That reminded me of when I left a scoop one morning in a bar on Ft Lauderdale beach. Later that day, a friend of mine walked into the same bar with his metal detector, and someone handed it to him.
The surfers were leaving, so I asked them if they weren't going to surf here. He said it looked a bit choppy, and they were going to check further south. I was going north, of course, and that was by far the best looking surf I was to see that day.
I had to recross Indian River to get to the north side of the inlet, and into Pepper Park. There I met a plump, blond woman about my age, walking up the beach swinging a meter back and forth, about 6" above the sand. Her meter box said "American" but that was all of the graphics that I could see. We chatted. She informed me she had found a Mercury dime near the south jetty earlier in the morning.
Here again, I found the dunes cut, but a lot of sand carried up the beach.
A few minutes later, I was digging a signal in the surf with my hand scoop (having switched detectors to a Sea Hunter II PI). It was a small signal, and the surf kept filling the hole. So, when the water went out, I dug furiously, dumping the sand to the side, hoping I'd have time to locate a signal in the spoil pile and recover it before the next wave. I did find the signal in the spoil, but a wave washed it away. When I looked up, I realized that a black paddle with a curved, red blade was sitting up on the sand, and was being ignored by the few folks nearby. I trotted over, and discovered it was an adjustable kevlar/graphite paddle board paddle, and it seemed to be in pretty good shape. I was thinking it could pay for my trip today.
I left Pepper Park and drove north to Rio Mar. I was finding out why they call it the Treasure Coast...the multi-million dollar homes and condos. Romney-Ryan signs were everywhere. One was planted right next to a sign warning that a beach entrance was private, no trespassing. I sort of wanted to stop and take a picture.
I'd seen on Google that there had been a lot of development on the island, nonetheless, I was disappointed by how much like Boca Raton it looked. And these affluent folks seemed riled up. There were a great many "Fire Obama!"signs confronting the poor tourists like myself using the few public beach accesses with their tiny parking lots. Considering the romance associated with this coast in my mind, it was distressing to find it so thoroughly colonized by the one percent.
In fact, the 5 parking spots at rio Mar were taken, and the residential streets nearbywere thoroughly posted. So I went on up to Corrigans. Here the lot was closed, for unknown reasons, leave your imagination free rein. However, folks were parked in the turn lane and over the curb without being ticketed, so I joined them.
Here the dunes towered over me, at least 8-10' tall. They were cut, and the sand on the lower beach was firm. Numbers of detectorists worked the beach at this late hour. I pulled a memorial cent from the bottom of the dune. I could see pieces of plastic down there too. At another spot in the dune, I pulled out what I think was a square nail.
I didn't find anything else interesting. I met another detectorist who informed me he had met a fellow who'd found something old made of brass. Someone else, he'd heard, had pulled a whole Chinese teacup from the dune. And there was a tale going around that a gold coin had been found.
I didn't fall asleep on the ride home. I was listening to a program on the public radio station from the treasure coast (88.9)about what money really is. Apparently, Greenspan has said that the money supply is infinite. Apparently, our national debt is illusory. We have what is called a “fiat” economy - money is created by fiat, electronically, by little gnomes at the Federal Reserve. The reason Greece is in trouble, is they don't create their own money, The European Central Bank makes the Euro, and Greece is merely one of the users. Which is why they can go bankrupt, and we can't. And this is also why creditors can bully them and force them to pay more interest on their loans. Japan, on the other hand, prints its own currency, the yen. They have twice the debt to production ratio of the United States (they:200%, we: 100%), yet they borrow money easily, and at the same rate the US does...about 1% on long-term loans. This is because they create their own money, and creditors know that there is no risk they won't be paid back. The only question for them, and for us, is who gets the money...and when.
And this, apparently, is something that neither Washington Republicans nor Democrats acknowledge, even the ones who understand it.
So, why does the US government borrow so much money according to these accounting anthropologists? Surprising answer to that one. If anyone is interested in what they say that is, let me know.
Sadly, the radio signal faded at around Palm Beach Gardens, before they got to the part about how one can get more of this funny money.
Started with should I go or not go? and ended with Republicans, Democrats and Anthropologists 
