Tuesday – Treasures
I think that people who love fantasy and imaginary stories also like the idea of treasures. My dad had a fantastic imagination and had many stories to tell. He loved to make us dream when we were little. I can’t remember the details of why we decided to go bury a treasure in our local park one day with him, but I do remember doing it.
I couldn’t have been more than about 4 years old. My brother, 3 years older. As he always has been. And that means my dad was around 35 years old. We lived in an apartment in Geneva, very close to a fantastic, big park -Park Bertrand. We often played in that park. I also got lost in there once when my brother decided to go back home to use the toilet but then forgot that he’d left me there. Mom quickly found me wandering around. Anyway, coming back to the time with the treasure burial.
When I think about it with my adult brain, I suspect this adventure of ours happened because we were getting ready to move to another, more permanent home. Maybe dad wanted to leave a legacy as a memory of our time in this first and temporary home in our newly adoptive country.
My dad smoked thin cigars that came in these nice wooden boxes. We collected these boxes because they were great to put things in.
“So, what should we leave in this box that we’ll bury in the park? Someone will dig it up and find it many years from now.”
He wrote a note with our names on it, I think, and we put a 5 Frs coin in there. Maybe my brother put a special rock in it? Maybe I also got to place something in there? I can’t remember for sure, but I do remember that we left the coin in there. And dad put nails into the lid around the edges and hammered the box closed.
My imagination went wild with the thought that whoever would find that box some years later would be excited to get this treasure! Maybe they would find us and thank us? I thought that probably by the time they found the coin it would be worth a ton more! Like gold. Alright, calm down people, no need to go get your shovels and locate the park. I can’t even tell you if it was in the eastern or western end of it.
Nope, we don’t know what became of our treasure. By now, the earthworms and other invertebrates have probably devoured the box and the note. So, we might never find out who found the coin. I do hope they got pleasure from their discovery though.
My mom showed me another treasure the other day. This one was found in the vegetable garden behind my paternal grandparents house a long time ago.
Farfar (dad’s dad in Swedish) stepped on the shovel one day to turn the soil in the garden and “klink”. It hit something metallic. The shovel had dented a silver spoon. We don’t know who this spoon belonged to. It looks very old. It is pure silver, not silver plated, and it has no stamp on it. Apparently, this could mean that it is very old since stamps on precious metal objects started to be obligatory in the 14 hundreds.
In Renaissance times, spoons were often made with a very thin handle and a wide bowl. That’s what this one looks like. And it’s decorated. So, my mom likes to think that it was part of a loot. A robber dropped the booty right there outside of the house during the escape and left this silver spoon behind. Could be! We will never know.
Do you have any special treasure stories? Please do share.
Let your imagination soar!
Be well sweet people and take care of yourselves.
