| Ol' H-Haid's gonna head to Civil War show & sale |
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By: MIKE WEST, Managing Editor
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Posted: Sunday, October 11, 2009 7:25 am
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Ol’ Hammerhaid’s looking forward to next weekend’s Civil War show and sale.
To be specific, the third annual Stones River Civil War and Military Show and Sale is set for Friday, Oct. 17 and Saturday, Oct. 18 at the Lane Agri-Park Community Center, 315 John R. Rice Blvd.
Naturally, or maybe we should say “unnaturally?’” Hammerhaid is probably the only adult native male in Rutherford County who’s never found a minie ball.
But, you have to keep in mind that he’s too lazy to even go hunting for them.
However, he wasn’t always that way.
Back in his childhood, he lived near a portion of Fortress Rosecrans before they stripped it down and built Jackson Heights Shopping Center on top of it.
Never found any there.
On the other hand, his buddy, Harold, knew the perfect spot to find them. In fact, Harold had quite a collection of spent balls, cannon ball fragments and the like.
Having pity on the poor young Hammerhaid, Harold took him minie ball hunting on more than one occasion.
“There’s one,” shouted Harold reaching down for what looked like a white rock. He snatched up a minie ball all bent up from impact. He found two or three more that day compared to zilch for his buddy.
They were there in the clay dirt for anyone with half sharp eyes to find, but not young Hammerhaid. He just couldn’t see them. Oh, he could find lots of stuff ... tin cans, nuts, bolts, rocks ... but none if it was from the Civil War era.
Honestly, bullets and other authentic gear was pretty easy to find back then. You just had to know where to go. The same was basically true with Native American artifacts. Hammerhaid’s uncle had a box full of arrow heads and the tools used to shape them.
Not Hammerhaid. He couldn’t even keep up with the stuff that his friends and relatives gave him. They would usually disappear into the “great somewhere” of his room.
In the years that followed, he would occasionally day dream about buying a fancy metal detector and finding all sorts of artifacts, but there was always at least two strong reasons to avoid that. A good metal detector isn’t cheap. In fact, a “cheapie” often costs more than $200.
Of course, that detector could soon pay for itself. And you shouldn’t forget the medical/physical benefits of all that walking and bending and shuffling that Hammerhaid would do out there in the hot, summer sun.
Yup, laziness trumps money any day in Hammerhaid’s way of thinking.
But that doesn’t mean he will miss the Civil War show.
One of his PBS’s “Antiques Roadshow” favorites will be there ... Rafael Eledge.
“He was on TV last week, doing a little appraising of a Union soldier’s photo, sword and Colt pistol,” Hammerhaid said. “He valued the collection at about $7,500.”
That’s about a million dollars less than Hammerhaid guessed, but he sometimes gets carried away.
T-t-t-that’s r-r-r-r-r-right. |
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