The Picnic Area - Revisited

At the beginning of the bike path – or at least where Sam and I start our walks, there’s a small picnic area which sits between the river and the dirt and gravel parking lot where we park. Usually, there are one or maybe two groups of people sitting at these picnic tables - leaving another four or five of the picnic areas empty. But the other evening, when we went on our walk, the place was full.

Apparently, Sam took note of this because last night, as I was fixing him dinner, he suggested that after he finishes eating, maybe we could go back to this picnic area - as well as the nearby playground - and he could bring his metal detector. This, of course, was fine by me.

I don’t have a lot to say about last night, but I did notice two things. First, I noticed that Sam didn’t bring his little garden shovel along. It turns out that this was because a) he couldn’t find it, and b) anyway, he says, almost all of the money he ends up finding, he finds on top of the ground, not buried.

I told him that I thought that maybe we need to get him another shovel, one that we could leave in the car.

I kind of like the idea of Sam digging a little bit for his treasure. I don’t want him to get too discouraged about going out and finding stuff - which would kind of defeat the reason he was given the metal detector in the first place - but I also don’t want him to get to the point where he expects to find stuff with a minimum amount of effort.

About twenty years ago, there was a guy living next door to us who had a metal detector. His name was Charlie. A couple of times a month, Charlie and his metal detector used to head out for the day, returning home after dusk - often, but not always, with some pretty cool stuff – maybe an old coin or two, or sometimes some other remnants from an earlier age – things like a fancy old belt buckle or the occasional piece of now antique jewelry. It took him a lot of time and a lot of perseverance over what I assume to be years, but Charlie had built up quite a collection.

I wish Charlie was still around so I could ask him where he went looking, but he moved away more than twenty years ago. Charlie was the kind of guy who wouldn’t have minded sharing that kind of information, and I suspect that he may have even enjoyed having a little bit of company when he went on his solitary adventures.

Maybe Sam doesn’t care so much about finding old artifacts. Maybe he would be happier just finding the occasional nickel and quarter. But then again, maybe not. I think that once we get through this latest blast of seemingly endless paperwork, and once we get past - or at least well into - the issues of transitioning into a job, maybe I’ll look into this a little bit more.

But, I digress…

As I was saying, when we went out last night, I noticed two things - the first being Sam’s lack of a shovel. The other thing I noticed was the trash cans – or actually, the trash can lids. While Sam was exploring the area around one of the picnic tables, I glanced over at a nearby trash can and I noticed that the lid was chained to a pole.

This seemed kind of strange. Who wants to steal a trash can lid? Well, apparently it's the same people who want steal the trash cans. When I went over for a closer look, I saw that not only was the lid chained to the pole, but the trash can was chained to the pole, as well. As I looked around at this family friendly picnic area, I saw that each and every one of the other trash cans were also chained to poles.

I'm not sure why, but there’s something vaguely disturbing to me to think that, in this otherwise bucolic setting, there are people roaming around here, looking to steal trash cans.

That would be one more reason why we should be armed with a shovel.