Thought of a couple more.
Granddad and his cohorts had been working City Park in New Orleans pretty hard. this would have been circa 1970. They'd had some good finds come out of there. Bullets from around
Dueling Oaks, an 18k gold dental bridge, watches and a little jewelry. Like most detectorists, people would wander up and ask what they were doing, and had they found anything. Granddad always keep the good stuff separate from the trash, pull tabs, and nails. When he was invariably asked he'd just show the trash pouch and say something like "pretty normal day." He'd get hit up for change by a lot of homeless types too. They just called them bums back then. One day they're working City Park and they start hearing sirens. Sirens that were getting louder. Suddenly NOPD cop cars are skidding in from every direction and officers with guns and "rosewoods" are all headed towards our heroes. The officers surround them, orders of "hands up", "freeze", "get on the ground", all that stuff. The police are very interested in the metal detectors. They ask what they are, why do they have them in the park, and what are they doing with them. Once they understand the metal detector they seem a bit relieved, but also like they've been cheated out of something. It turns out someone had called the police because they believed that my Granddad and his friends were roaming through City Park and shocking bums with cattle prods. NOPD back then wouldn't particularly care about someone shocking bums, but they were going to hand out a beating at every opportunity.
Another episode entailed a field trip out to Barataria Bay to what I suspect is Ft. Livingston. They brought along a camera and took a number of pictures of themselves exploring the area and "finding" several civil war era cannons still on their pintles. The idea was they'd come back and salvage the cannons and MD the area for civil war era finds. They had my mom write up an article about the trip and they submitted it to "Treasure Found" magazine. "Treasure" happily cut a check for a couple hundred bucks and ran it in their next issue. Granddad and Co. were heroes in their local circle. A major excavation and finds were just within reach. They were looking at boats to make an easier approach and get heavy items out easier. Someone else had other plans, though. Whoever owned that old fort apparently had a subscription to "Treasure Found" and a lawyer. The cease & desist arrived nearly immediately. So much for hauling cannons out of the marsh.
It wasn't all rough going. I remember he had a particular way of working the lowest step of the seawall along Lake Pontchartrain. He showed me a bootlace once that was tied into a loop. It was completely full of class rings, engagement rings, and wedding rings he'd found using that method. I'd never seen so much gold in one place in my life. He had an underwater detector for this, but there was so much iron and rebar in the seawall and nails and pull tabs in the sand, finding anything by pinpointing was impossible. He zip tied some metal mesh to an innertube, tied that to his belt and went along the bottom step with a square nose shovel. Profit.
He bought a spin caster and started casting scrap gold finds into something new. I remember buying a wax casting item with him once that was an intricately and beautifully carved mermaid. Her tail, though, was a tiny spoon and not a fin. when I asked about (I was 5?) all he said was "Don't tell your mom."
I have that issue of Treasure Found at work. It took me a few years to track one down but I'm happy I finally found one.
