Thimble Nirvana

My buddy Jo Jo and I took a drive out to an old cellar hole site last weekend.  I had hunted the site a few years back, and even though I knew it had probably been hit by all the cellar hole junkies a few times since, I still wanted to check it out again.

We spent a few hours there, and except for Jo Jo starting off with an old spoon, we really had to work for our finds.  The iron and junk infestation was epic, and if not for my mad detecting skills, I would not have been able to locate every bottle cap, shot gun shell, and pull tab in the area 🙂

I would have been happy to find a button, but did get pretty excited over an old buckle, and then Jo Jo did find an old flat button, so we knew there were still some good possibilities left behind.

I hunted around the perimeter for a while, then I moved in closer to the cellar hole. After digging a few square nails, I was just about to suggest we pack it in when I got a nice repeatable tone that I thought might be a soda bottle cap, but you never know, so I dug.

I was surprised as heck when I pulled out a thimble—woo hoo!

Now, for most folks, a thimble isn’t much cause for celebration, but for me it was like Thimble Nirvana. Its kind of hard to describe the excitement I had over it, and unless someone detects, they won’t understand the significance.

Over the years, I have found many thimbles. There were even periods when I wished I would stop finding them, but this one was unique, in that it was not flattened, broken, cracked, smushed, rusted, or deteriorated in some form—Its age or value was unimportant in this case, because it was found as lost years ago, in its entire thimble glory, that is why it was so special.

I’m sure some of you can relate to this. Maybe it wasn’t thimbles you were finding, perhaps it was cracked crotal bells, broken flat buttons or illegible coins, and you found them, and you did a happy dance (hopefully in your mind), then you found more of them, and it was great to check those items off the bucket list, because at least you found them; but what we all want is to find that perfect item that isn’t broken, cracked, illegible, or deformed in some way.  

We want everything we dig to come out of the ground in pristine condition, and when it does, or even comes close to our ideal vision of perfect relic bliss, as in the case of this thimble , well, that is simply in my favorite word “awesome”!

Thanks for helping me celebrate my thimble dream come true, and  Happy Hunting!