Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com
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| Looks Like A Dredge Just South of Jupiter Inlet Photo submitted by Goldnugget or NC |
Last night I was looking around at some of those web sites that show where ships and boats are and what they are doing. Those sites can be pretty interesting. They are much like the web sites you can use to track airplane traffic. Anyhow while looking at one of those nautical sites I noticed a dredge just below the Jupiter Inlet. Then just this morning Goldnugget sends this picture. There it is. It looks like there will be more sand dumped somewhere real soon.
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| Web Site Showing Nautical Activity. |
Here is an example of one of those web sites showing nautical traffic. On the web sites you can generally click on the object and get additional information, such as the name of the vessel, its speed, etc. etc.
I'm not sure now if the track I'm showing here is the one I found for the dredge, but you get the idea. It might be the track for the dredge, but I'm not sure.
There was another vessel that was running in and out just below the Jupiter inlet. That was interesting too. Could have been someone doing a mag survey or just trolling for fish in a very systematic way. I wasn't looking for that at the time.
I like ephemera. You can often finding interesting information in old newspapers, maps, pamphlets, posters, photos, etc.
I found this post card a few years ago. It was written in 1875 by a theology profession at Bethany College in West Virginia and sent to a fellow in Ohio wanting to know about the classes that were going to be offered.
What I recently discovered is that the first US Postal Cards were made in 1873. Here is soe of the information I found by using this link. http://www.metropostcard.com/guidepostals.html
Notice the spatters on the postcard. Black ink turns brown with age.
You can go to the web site if you want to learn more about those early postcards. I had no idea that this post card was one of the earliest.
If it was written and postmarked in 1875, it could have been created earlier. I haven't narrowed that down yet.
Here is the obituary of the fellow that sent the postcard. He was somewhat notable.
The internet is a great research tool. Amazing what you can find.For a while I taught at a West Virginia State College just a few miles from Bethany so the post card and history was a little more interesting for me.
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If any young people are reading this I wanted to post a warning to them today. Here it is. It doesn't take very long to go from being a young pup to an old dog.
I woke up from a dream last night.that made me think.
You know how dreams are - they don't always make much sense. Well in this dream it seemed I was in the selection process for the US Military with a group of fellas and we were shooting rifles. In the dream I didn't do very well. My first shot missed the mark, and my second went through the window of a truck. By way of excuse, I told the fellows that I had been collecting social security for three years, and the last time I was drafted was fifty years ago. That was in the dream that I said that.
I woke up, and being that the dream was on my mind, I calculated to see if it had been that long since I was drafted in real life. It hadn't been that long. It was back in, mmmmm, probably 1970 that I actually reported for my physical.
Being in graduate school in Louisville Kentucky at the time I received my notice, I and a bunch of other young fellas loaded the bus in downtown Louisville and was chauffeured out to Fort Knox. I remember that well. The mood was sombre, like we had just won a free trip to Viet Nam.
I remember that I blew the top off the charts on my hearing test. I had ears like a dog and could hear high pitch frequencies that not many people could hear. I think listening to a constant threshold tone in my detector ear phones might have done some damage to that, but maybe it is normal aging.
I remember standing in Fort Knox in my underwear and the fellow who was inspecting us stared at my feet and wrote something down. I thought at the time that he was noting my flat feet. I'm not so sure that was what he was writing about now.
I also had a trick knee at the time. Sometimes it would lock and other times give way without warning. That was my greatest reward from high school football. One doctor thought I should have surgery on my knee, but there is no remaining evidence of that problem today. I flunked my physical for some reason or another and received a 2Y draft status, which was not as bad as a 4F, if I remember those things correctly.
Anyhow, after waking up I calculated that it had only been about 43 years since the time I was drafted and not fifty something. That isn't that long. Nonetheless I've definitely changed from a young pup to an old dog.
There has been a lot of water under the bridge even though it doesn't seem like it has been all that long ago. I've been a lot of places and done a lot of things in those 43 odd years. In many ways it seems that I'm a totally different person now.
I can only feel blessed to not be much worse off for the wear. In a lot of ways I'm better off than when I was a young pup even though I might not look like it. The amazing thing to me is that it all took so little time.
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On the Treasure Coast the tides are now pretty flat with less than 2.5 feet of variation.
The surf is running about three feet.
I'm hoping that by Easter we get another good chance to get some older things.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
