When I was 10 or 11 years old, my father had a friend named Charlie, who was much older than Dad. When road construction started on the 100 miles of Coast Hiway 1, that hangs along the cliffs of Big Sur in California, Charlie took my Uncle and they hiked through there before the road was built. Charlie was the guy that discovered along that same route, the jade at what is now called Jade Cove, but in those days was Willow Creek. Charlie also owned a claim for a chrome (I think) mine, anyhow he had a claim we were able to hunt deer on. Charlie was a prospector, and a treasure hunter. I was 10 years old in 1947, so that was before metal detectors, and Charlie and his wife would come over and visit my folks, and I would assume a very low profile, never saying a word, just listening while Charlie was telling about prospecting for gold, or looking for treasure, and he was always only about three feet from finding Jaquine Muretta's treasure. Always just about there, he'd found the signs and had it figured out every time. This is before metal detectors, except WWII surplus mine detectors, so he must have probed, and dug a lot of big holes. Anyhow, that was my start, the bug was biting hard, and besides that, on vacations and picnics dad would help, and we'd pan for gold. I remember Dad finding an old sluice box and tearing it apart and finding quit a bit of color out of cracks in the wood. The gold he got out of that was silver color from the mercury in it, and when he put that in the bottle with the other gold that he'd panned, the mercury migrated and turned all the gold in that little bottle silver colored. Beside that, we didn't have a lot of money, so our vacations tended to be doing things that didn't cost money, and we go ghost towning and rock hunting in the desert. In those days there were no hen house rules, you asked the ranger where the best place was to find arrow heads, or thunder eggs, or agate, or where the ghost town was. So I sort of grew up with the bug, but didn't get a detector until I was in my mid 20's, and then it was a Whites BFO, and I found very little with that machine. I got discouraged by those results, but eventually rented a machine, don't remember the brand, but there was no discrimination, and I found some neat relics, and from then on it was Katy bar the door. So when I divorced my first wife, I bought myself a divorce present, a Whites 6000 Di Pro, and I still have the machine. I didn't have the money to really use a detector when the kids were small, and now that I can afford to have an expensive machine, I don't have the health to use it like I'd like to. But that's life and I'm not complaining, I still use it when I can, but not in the hard to get to places anymore. In my old age, I'm like Charlie, I have a hot line on a pocket of gold, but the hike in there is just darn well impossible now. My X wife used to have a fit about my metal detecting and gold hunting. She always figured that if I found a 50 lb nugget it would do us no good, because I wouldn't sell it, and she was no doubt right, it's one of those things, you know, look at what I found, eat your heart out. Anyhow, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
