Treasure Hunters
I met Kay during a South Tacoma neighborhood walk. As our group headed east on 56th Street, she pointed out the two-story Victorian she shares with her husband. “1912,” she replied to my inquiry of when it was built. “In fact, we recently had some curious guests because of its age.” Curious guests? Please continue.
After the doorbell rang, Kay opened the door to find two men with muddy boots and shovels. Religious folks and people selling security systems are common in our neighborhood, but these gentlemen standing on Kay’s front porch fit into neither category. “Can we dig up your backyard?”
Have you ever had a break in? Do you know where you will spend eternity? How much is your cable bill? Would you like three free months of to The News Tribune? My friend was prepared for many questions, none having to do with excavation. Perhaps fearing the door was about to slam, the men began to explain. They didn’t want to dig up the whole backyard, just a five by five foot space. When this failed to provide any clarity, one of the strangers risked further creepiness and held out a sheet of paper with various lines and shapes. “This is your house” he said while pointing to one rectangle in a row of a dozen. “And this,” he said while pointing to an even smaller adjacent square, “is where we want to dig.” “Why there?” Kay asked. “Because that’s where the outhouse was.” “Outhouse?” “Yes, you’d be surprised what can be found buried beneath layers of old crap.”
These strangers were treasure hunters, and they were prepared to get dirty in pursuit of forgotten gold. They traipsed around Tacoma, equipped with old maps shovels and a desire to find (but not necessarily keep) things long lost; keys, rings, coffee mugs, even old beer bottles. In order to experience this joy of discovery they were willing to dig through layers of waste as old as Woodrow Wilson. They promised Kay that they wouldn’t take long, that she could keep whatever they found and that they would repair the site when finished. “So,” I interrupted, “what did you do?” “Are you kidding? How could I say no? I opened the gate and followed them into the backyard to dig up some...stuff.”
I had forgotten about Kay’s curious guests until recently when I turned to the Op-Ed page to see the call for reader columnists. I don’t own a metal detector, wouldn’t know where to find an old map and only our dog and eight-year-old use our backyard as an outhouse. That being said, I do possess a pair of perfectly correctable eyes, almost fifteen years history in the same neighborhood and a dogged willingness to dig through layers of… stuff, if it may mean uncovering something beautiful. What if instead of searching for treasures in backyards, I began searching for them in my neighborhood? My seeker senses tell me that South Tacoma is a neighborhood full of hidden, forgotten and unnoticed things. I wonder what kind of trinkets, oddities, tales or places lay hidden beneath layers of time, indifference or inattention? How fun would it be to spend the next year digging around, to become a treasure hunter?
“So, did they find anything?” I asked. “Oh yeah, two beer bottles, a jackknife and part of a pocket watch.” Kay let them keep everything. “It was worth it, if only to make me wonder what other treasures might be in our backyards. So, how about you,” she asked, “how old is your house?”
