Treasure Hunt

I didn't exactly go on a treasure hunt when I was home, but I did find a few, and so did Malcolm.

The first "treasure" we found, is really less of a treasure and just something we thought was neat. We were out walking in the yard one evening on our way back from checking the colts water, when Malcolm looked down and right there on the ground was a button. It wasn't pressed into the dirt or anything. It's almost as if someone had just dropped it. It almost looks like some kind of military button. It has an eagle on the front and some kind of inscription on the back, but we can't read it. Malcolm says its either copper or brass, but he's not sure which, but probably brass he says. We don't know what it is exactly but we thought it was really neat, so we kept it.





Among the old buildings on the property there was a trailer house that was a little beyond use. Lets just say it had a tree branch through the kitchen cabinets. Last May, Malcolm and his Dad hooked the thing up to our pickup and pulled it over to the pile of debris and garbage thats collecting back in the corrals for burning and disposal. I'm throwing this picture in because it has a humerous, to us, story. You see our friend Brandon and his wife had just purchased a brand new camper. Malcolm and Brandon like to harras each other all the time. SO...Malcolm had me take a picture of him pulling HIS "new camper" and email it to Brandon and Jessica. So thats that story.
It just goes along with the wierd twisted sense of ranch and western humor. If you don't see the humor in it, thats ok. I guess you had to be there. There's a company that publishes and sells in gas stations out here all these really stupid post cards depicting silly western humor. You may have gotten one from me in fact. A few of you did. Like one shows two pickups parked next to each other on an empty road and two guys talking and it says "Montana Informaion Superhighway" or something like that. And another one shows two redneck people pointing in opposite directions with a passle of kids standing around them. Behind them in a truck hooked to a trailer house, and it says "Land Development Planning Committee" or something close. Anyway, maybe I ought to sell them my photo of our camper.


In the old trailer was an ancient refridgeratoor that Malcolm wanted to get and use in his garage as air tight storage for his welding equipment. So one day while we were home, he had me come back to the trailer to help him load it into the pickup and then unload it at his shop. Just out of curiosity he plugged the crazy thing in, and wouldn't you know...it still works. It works so well that when he turned the temp. down on it, it froze the water in his cooler solid. SO....instead of being a storage bin, its now his cool, retro shop fridge, complete with originall ice cube tray and little freezer compartment. Doesn't he look proud?



Back to the trailer. For months now, Malcolm's Dad had been telling me there were some boxes of books in that trailer and I should go see if there was anything I wanted before they got burned, demolished, or whatever is going to happen to that trailer. I just hadn't done it because the trailer is full of piles of junk, quite mousy looking, and I just didn't feel like running into any surprises while I was snooping around. But, since I was already in the trialer on the fridge errand, I went snooping around the perimeter of the piles. The boxes of books were in the bathroom, partially covered by an old mattress that had been tossed in there. The first box was full of old childrens encyclopedia's, not really of much interest to me. The second box closest to the door was 1970 and 80 religious books. Not much of interest there either. The next box I found some old hardbound children's books that I thought were neat so I got brave and dug in a little deeper and Malcolm was in the other room when he heard a very load squeal of delight. Check it out....
















This is an original 1936 Little House on the Prairie that has the original illustrations by Helen Sewell. I've wanted these for a while now, but just couldnt' bring myself to pay over $300 for a book, no matter how much I wanted it. My treasured copy is worthless due to the binding damage, but at the same time its priceless....I LOVE my book. I was ecstatic...what a surprise, what an unexpected discovery.


Needless to say, I threw caution to the wind and plunged into the pile of junk with abandon. Actually I flipped threw a few more books, and told Malcolm to just load them up and I'd pilfer through them in the safety of my kitchen. But I did have to dig around to make sure I had all the boxes. See all my treasures? This is only half of them, because the next day I went back and really dug around and found more.






In addition to my Little House book, I also have two original Nancy Drew's, an 1926 Hardy Boys, a book about some military guy that was published in 1899 and little book missing the title page that was published in 1898, a very old looking copy of Black Beauty that I can't find a date on, but its really neat looking so...., several old horse books, that I kind of collect anyway, a 1950 Hymnal from First Baptist Church of Baker, a 1950 hardbound Webster Dictionary in really good condition that looks just like my Mom's, and so many many more. If you want the complete list, I've got them all written down in a notebook I brought with me. Email me...I'll share the list if you really want to know.







One of the books I found first, that let me know I might actually be onto something other than boxes of dusty outdates religious material, was Never Tease A Weasel, which was a book from my childhood, that ironically my Mom had just mentioned on her blog because she was reading it to Bentlee, my niece. The copy I found is in near perfect condition, and looks, and even smells like the one from my childhood memory. Yes, I stuck my nose in a book thats been sitting in an old mouse infested trailer house....because the smell of books will always be one of my favorite "perfumes."







There was also a little book of poetry written by a previous resident of the place where I live, and this 1968 Carter County Brand Book that had pages and pages of brands in it. (our county)






The inside Cover had this poem in it, which I wrote in my notebook to share with you, because I like it. Here it is:

The houses were scattered

The fences were few

But the people were friendly

The country was new

The range stretched away

With the sky for a lid

I'm old, but I'm glad

That I lived when I did.

-unknown

Also I found this harmonica in its box. It was made in Germany. The box is a little flimsy, but the harmonica is new and shiny looking.


Needless to say, I now have a problem, because my bookshelf, which you met in my previous blog of favorite things, is alreay full. Don't ask me how, but somehow I managed to force myself to put all my new treasures in boxes and stash them in the closet instead of reverently placing them on the bookshelf. Well....some of my previously owned books had to sacrifice space because the Little House book, the Nancy Drews, and a few of the neatest horse books, went on the shelf with their appropriate companions that had resided there for years already. It would have been sacreligious to put Laura in a box anyway!!!!!