Thursday, January 30, 2014

1/30/14 Report - General Store, Recent Off-Beach Detecting Finds and Mastodon Bones


Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.


Author Inspecting Old General Store

I've been talking about photography and cameras a bit lately.  Here is a photo that I really like, taken in the 40s.

It seems the author needed a lift to get a better view of the area.

Old photos can provide good leads and show where the action was back in the day.

This particular photo is a family photo.  The store was operated by my grandparents, which are now deceased.

The building still stands in the same location although it has been changed quite a bit.  It has been a personal residence, a barber shop and now, I understand, a pizza shop.

And behind the store in the low area next to the creek, arrowheads where found when the bottom was plowed.  Potatoes grew well there.

If you watch the Pickers TV show, you know that those old soda and gasoline signs are worth a pretty penny today.

I just read an interesting little fact.  The price of a bottle of coca cola remained 5 cents for half a century.

And another fact, or so they say.   Coca Cola is more dense than water, and a can of Coca Cola will sink in water, but not a can of diet Coke.   I haven't tried it, but that is what I read.   I don't know if that holds for salt water.

Have you ever noticed that people used to have only antiques.  :)


I once found an old blue square telephone sign on one of my walks on the Treasure Coast.   Too bad it was mostly rusted and gone.  It would have been a good find if more of it was there.


Yesterday I mentioned that there have been some nice off-beach finds lately.   One reader said

Today I found my first Seminole War item. The button is the same one in the Fort Pierce Collection, page 7, item K.

Congratulations!   I might get a photo of that button to show you soon.




Often when things aren't going too well, it can be a blessing in disguise.  That is very often true in life in general as well as metal detecting.

If you don't just give up, problems can force you out of your comfort zone and force you to do and learn new things.  Then you find something new.



William M. has gone off-beach recently too.  He found this WW II St. Christopher aviator hat pin in an old Fort Pierce park.

Nice find William.   Thanks for the photo.



Whatever happened to the mammoths or mastodons, giant beavers and the megafauna that used to roam Florida just over a thousand years ago.  One theory is that they were hunted to death by humans.  (The Treasure Coast beaches occasionally yields mastodon bones.  I've posted a few in this blog.)

Here is another theory.  It says that they pretty much died off before they were killed off.  Here is a link that will take you to an article about that.

http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/2014/01/what-killed-great-beasts-north-America


You might have read or seen how Atlanta was paralyzed by three inches of snow.  I don't think it was the snow.  It was the ice.  Those people normally don't have snow tires or much experience driving in anything worse than rain.

I moved there back in the day, and just after moving there from the North, one morning it snowed.  I drove downtown to work, went up to the 20 something floor, looked out the window, and my car was the only one in the huge parking lot down below.  There was one set of tire tracks in the newly fallen, maybe one inch of snow.  Mine!   Nobody else drove into the city that day.  That is just one of those things I'll always remember.  Looking out the window and seeing my car all alone and one set of tire tracks.

Here is a link about Atlanta's recent snow.

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/if-3-inches-of-snow-can-cause-this-much-chaos-in-atlanta-what-will-economic-collapse-look-like



On the Treasure Coast the wind increased and was coming from the North yesterday.  It was pretty breezy.  The surf was still coming pretty much from the East and was only about four feet.  Today it should be a touch higher.

The only promising thing, and I'm not getting excited about it yet, is the 8 foot seas in the predictions about a week out.  As we know, big surf predicted a week in advance never materializes.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net