The night WAS humid. Not that this is terribly unusual in Brunswick, GA, in mid-July. I slept on soggy sheets. I count the weeks and days until October, when we'll finally get another hurricane some relief. That was amusing to be reminded of how writers worked in the pre-digital era. I don't miss typewriters at all.
To be fair, that's what I would do, if I were the one doing the reading. I have little patience for clickbait, or waiting for new episodes to drop in podcasts or Netflix series. But since I'm the writer, and letting everybody read along with the story as it's written, it sorta has to be done piecemeal. Well, it doesn't have to. I could write a story and post it in its entirety and get maybe eight to ten likes and two or three replies to it if I'm lucky, then watch it sink into oblivion...
Blue Cole was active on the PCGS/Collectors Universe coin forums in the early 2000s. There is a Metal Detecting Forum there, and he and I must have discussed detecting and coinshooting* at some point, though I do not recall the specific conversations. (* Coinshooting is the subdiscipline of metal detecting that involves hunting specifically for coins, as opposed to relic hunting or beachcombing or other types of detecting.) In October of 2002, my wife and daughter and I went to visit my wife's best friend, who lived north of Atlanta. While we were there, the girls went out on a hardcore shopping spree and craft store-plundering expedition. Now, I don't mind a craft store occasionally, but after about fifteen minutes in one, I've reached the limit of my endurance and attention span. And to spend the day in several of them, in the presence of two craft-crazy ladies who'd been friends since kindergarten ... well, it's obvious I'd have been the odd man out, and bored out of my skull before lunchtime. So rather than spend the entire day mall-hopping with three females, I opted to stay behind. Since the girls had taken my wife's friend's car, I had ours at my disposal. At some point before the Atlanta visit, Blue Cole must have invited me to come down to Sharpsburg to meet him. With the whole day free and my wife and our hostess fully occupied, it seemed the ideal opportunity to take Blue up on his offer and head on down there for a day trip, hopefully to do a little detecting. (I had of course brought my detector and dig tools along.) And so I set out from the north side of Atlanta and headed towards Sharpsburg, in a roughly southwesterly direction. The drive down took me about an hour. I was more impulsive then, and thought nothing of driving an hour one way, just to visit a complete stranger* in the off chance that I might get invited to some virgin coinshooting sites. (* OK, maybe not a complete stranger, since Blue Cole and I had spoken a few times online.)
And ... We went diggin'. The End. There, that oughtta please the folks who wanted a quick conclusion this time, right? j/k
Reminds me of the poem I wrote when I was the Phantom Poet in 9th grade. My friend Bill asked why I didn't write a poem about him since I was writing them about every other odd thing. So I did. 'A Poem about my Friend Bill' My Friend Bill.
Fun side note I just discovered: long after my visit, some episodes of The Walking Dead Season 2 were shot on location in Sharpsburg. Seems that's the little town's claim to fame now. At least until this story is finished. Afterwards, the tour bus will stop and the driver will say over the intercom, "On our right is the location where Lordmarcovan and Blue Cole found the [...] on Halloween evening in 2002." Poor little Sharpsburg. I hope they're ready for the huge influx of LordM groupie tourism that's about to descend upon them.
So, the first thing I did this morning over coffee (since I somehow missed it in its original time slot) was go read the 9 page Orangeburg saga in its entirety, which took me about an hour (had to make some pit stops). I found it entirely satisfying & thought provoking! Now the Sharpsburg story,... its like comparing a limerick to a tome...sheesh!
Naw, I was younger and less decrepit then, and not working all graveyard shifts. If they saw me now, though ...