We bought our first place in Missouri and learned quickly all country folk ain't as friendly as you would think. We stayed there just long enough to sell it and get the Hell out of the area. We were looking for a new place so we would be ready when that one sold. We were out in the country just looking at the views of the mountains when we topped a hill. There was one beautiful sight to behold.

Well the look only lasted seconds because about half way down the hill was cars parked on both sides of the road. B slowed down and we looked for what was going on. To my right there was a large tent and chairs under it. I told B it was an auction. I used to go to them all the time when I was young. It was one of Glenn's favorite pastimes. I asked B if she wanted to stop and look around and she found a parking spot just a little down the hill past the lane. We were there just minutes and B found some people to talk to. It was the owners son and his wife. Well I really wanted to see the tools sell but she wanted to go in and look at the house. They tried to sell it earlier but never came close to the price the owner would settle for. We looked inside and met many of the family members. B has a way of making friends in seconds. The house needed much work to get it up to what we would want. It was a sound house, it just had not seen an update since it was built 25 years before. We had places to be so I left the owner our phone number and told him to call me if it didn't sell.

It was Tuesday and the auction was last Saturday so I figured it sold. B wanted me to call anyway. I called and the owner said it had not sold but he had lost my number. He said if we wanted to we could come over and look at the place again when we had time. Wednesday we drove over and looked at it. I get lost in a small town mall but B can find her way back to a place we were at 2 weeks ago. I told the man I would really like to buy it but our place had not sold yet. He said, "Yeah I know and you ain't got the money." Well that hit me wrong so being that he had ten to twelve years on me, I asked if he could walk us around the place so we could see what 6 acres looked like. The front was pretty level but the back was typical Ozark. It took about four times as much energy to get back to the house as it did going down to the back part. B and I fell in love with it and the view from the front and back porch. We stopped at the bank on the way home and got a short time note and set up a time to buy it. We lucked out and our old place sold the same week as we closed on the new place. The cabinets were a dull brown wood and the counter was green and ugly. I order new counters and took down all the cabinets. I took the cabinets out to the garage and sanded them and painted them white. I took the bottom doors off and did the same and then painted the base to match. Well between back splash, microwave, new range and refrigerator it was shaping up. We got flooring at Lowes and I had the kitchen, dinning room and hall done in less than a week. The back porch was just studded walls so we practiced our drywall working skills in there. We put in a tile floor in the and painted the back porch a robin egg blue. I was quite pleased with what we had done and was ready to take the winter off. Well the walls were a ugly plain panel. I could live with it but B hated them. She said since the drywall in the porch worked out so well, we could drywall the dinning room and the living room and the halls and paint. I went out on the front porch and just looked at the mountains. I took off the light switch covers and outlet covers and started removing the panels. I was half way around the room and I removed a switch cover and the was a folded up piece of paper. It was dogeared and taped to the panel. I pulled it out and it had a bunch of numbers wrote on it. There was twelve numbers in order. and then two numbers wrote on the right side of the page. I won't tell you the numbers on the left but the numbers on the right was 250 and 300. They made no since at all but I kept it to study later. Over the winter we moved the stove and tiled the walls behind it, dry walled and papered the whole house. We were out in the very back one day and I had to get some material for the fence, I walked it off and figured it was about 250 feet across the back. It never hit me until I was up that night playing Minefield. The paper was a map or chart if you will. After some weeks of working on it I realized it was only the back half of the property that was mapped out. I walked off 300 ft from the back SE corner and then walked west to the fence. I got some drafting paper out and squared it off at 5 foot squares. I numbered it off and picked the lowest number and went to that spot. That spot was in the creek and was nothing but rock. I went back to the drawing and renumbered it starting from the North west corner. You got to love it. That way put me in the barn. I had just poured a concrete floor in it two weeks before. I kicked around and if I was right the spot would be just under the doorway of the tack room. It was elevated two steps up off the floor. I went inside and locked the door. I removed a 4 ft by 4 ft piece of flooring. There was 3 big rocks. One thing about Missouri you never had to buy rocks. I moved the rocks and the was a round paving stone under them. I lifted it up and there was a concrete container in the ground. It had an old coffee can in it and it had a lid pop riveted and siliconed. I went up to the house and got a can opener. In side was rolls of old money. Well when I could breath again I counted the money. There was $40,000 in that can. I walked up to the house and got a water pail and put the money in it and took it and showed B. The next day I tried to find a new spot. The next area was in a patch of daffodils and I planed on moving some of them any way. It was 20 minutes before I found another coffee can. It was sealed the same way and weighed a ton. I put it in the wheelbarrow with the flowers and pushed it up to the garage. All silver dollars. This is where I made a big mistake. I took 30 of them to a coin collector in town. Well it wasn't long before people were talking. I hid the rest in the garage in a wall and put the paper money in the bank a little at a time. I wasn't in a hurry. I figured it had been there for years so I would let the rest stay for a while. I guess it was about a month later, I went to the third area. I poked around till I hit something that didn't feel like a rock. I was moving some rocks out of the way when I saw him. I only saw the feet but I knew he was there. I walked up and got the wheel barrow and loaded it up with rocks and one dirt covered coffee can. I pushed the wheel barrow up to the flower bed out front and laid rocks around it for the next two hours. The next day I picked a spot that was far from any correct place on the map and dug there. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the boots again. About 120 ft off the fence row behind some wild rose hedge. I kept busy and watched as best as I could. I had a friend that played as an extra in a movie. He told me they had a line or two to tell an other extra but if you never got it right. It didn't matter. As long as you never looked at the camera you did good. I felt that way I didn't want to give myself away. I put some rocks in the wheel barrow and then I took the one silver dollar out of the wheel barrow and softly put it in the fresh dirt. I took my shovel and raked over it and went up with my new rocks. Early the next morning I went and checked the place where I put the coin. It was gone. No more assumptions. At this time Springfield was having many home invasions. We decided it would be best to put the place up for sale. The place could not sell 3 years prior for $65,000 but it sold in one month for over twice that.

On the way out of town I found two more of the cans in the light of the moon. Sometimes it is better to get when the getting is good. I read the area news daily just to see if anything turned up and we check the real estate ads every week. Can't tell when you want to go back and look for mushrooms again.

By William Bailey

From: United States

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