Treasure Hunt

Imagine that it is the late 1960s or early 1970s. You are a late forty-something dwarf orthodontist in a third world country and your rich father died. You know if communists aren't going to redistribute the family silver then probate will practically confiscate them. You are already short, greek and paranoid, so you do what any sensible short greek paranoid orthodontist would do.

We bought the metal detector because my grand-aunts hid silver and jewelery from the communists and other government officials in the backyard. "Even pirates leave maps!" I said as I took the metal detector and swept the garden. My Great-GrandUncle Manuel worked a glorious garden in his time, but the desert has taken back all but the hardiest of plants. With the grass gone and bric-a-brac from the late 60s to present strewn across the most of the backyard is a litterbox/junkyard.

I found an iron spike. Sweeping over some catpoo another beep. I shovel it up. Another iron spike. No coins, no hairpins, no rings, certainly no silve. Just iron spikes and bric-a-brac. After two and a half hours I gave up on the sweep. I found this milk box from the communist era in the workshop though. When Allende redistributed the milk farms the new owners didn't produce milk. So the Allende government created the Programa Nacional De Leche. The program bought powdered milk from other countries, this one from Belgium in November of 1971.

I found better treasures without the metal detector. Butterflies in the yard, A 1928 love letter from my great-grandfather to my great-grandmother, Chilean Escudos, Peruvian Reals, fantastic old tins from Tio Manuel's drawers with gears and switches. The pictures were the best, I wish I could scan them. I didn't move anything, it felt strange enough to me looking through dead relatives things, but at the same time I found out more about them than I ever knew before. Tio Manuel was a boxer! Alquinoi had a whole group of friends in college, and she attended despite her father's disapproval.