Have you ever dreamed of finding that legendary pot of gold? In my many years searching Stone Arabia soil I’ve found small fragments of the area’s past. Even though they were not huge they were still treasures to me. Links with a yesterday we could only read about in books. I’ll tell you about an experience in a field where I was sure that an 18th Century house once stood. When the field was plowed it yielded buttons, pieces of ancient glass bottles, musket balls and fragments of metal objects. One day my metal detector found a place it was particularly fond of. By its beeps there was no doubt that something lay there deeper beneath the soil. Whatever it was it was further down than anything I had ever found there before. It was necessary to go home for a shovel to expose the elusive treasure. Soon after starting, my shovel struck something that was very hard. Now was the time to proceed very carefully so my emerging treasure was not damaged. Yes, there was a considerable sized piece of rusty iron.
As I further cleared the dirt away it became surely an iron pot or kettle. Was this my lucky day to find that pot of gold we have all heard about? If it was not filled with gold coins, then possibly silver, or at the very least a hoard of British copper coins. Had the few 18th Century coins I had found near the surface been companions to the many others that I knew filled this ancient iron pot? I gazed down into the hole with great excitement. I dug to expose my pot of whatever. I found that what I had was a large piece of the side of a kettle. Fate had placed it on its side so that it appeared to be a complete kettle. I thought how an 18th Century cook was preparing the evening meal only to find that her favorite pot was cracked and useless. She cast it out of the door; it broke into fragments and became buried in the fertile soil of Stone Arabia. After becoming so close to finding the legendary pot of gold it seemed I should keep my unusual find. I recently after many years came across it and decided its story should be told.
