Lon Pelton: one of my greatest metal detecting finds. Some of the best finds while pursuing my hobby of metal detecting are the people I meet along the way. In 2001 I meet Lon Pelton while detecting at a house being renovated into a museum. He was doing some of the plumbing and landscaping work. In appreciation for restoring the building I told the museum founder that I would donate all of my finds to the museum. My favorite find was my first hammered English Farthing token from the era of James I called a Lennox round minted in the early 1600’s which I sadly donated. Even though the monetary value was less than $25.00 I was thrilled to have found a coin most likely used by the earliest English settlers in this country. The next donation was a1721 Mexican two real followed by the best 1787 Vermont copper I had ever seen. The museum founder showed Mr. Pelton all of the artifacts that I had detected and he was impressed but I think he felt sorry for me giving up such nice finds because a few weeks late he told me that he had spread a truck load of the top soil from the museum property on his daughter’s back lawn before I started detecting at the museum site. He said that I could detect the top soil and keep whatever I find. I smiled to myself in appreciation of his kindness. Unfortunately nothing of interest was found in the top soil. Since then Mr. Pelton has called me a few times to detect on property he was working on but in August 2007 I had permission to detect a lot that was being developed and as it turned out Mr. Pelton was doing the site work there. Now I knew Mr. Pelton as a generous person but when he said, “I want you to come over to my house. I have a truck load of soil from the front yard of an early 1800’s house in my back yard that I saved for you to detect” I could not believe what I was hearing. Dumbstruck, I didn’t respond and the conversation wandered into a different direction. A few weeks later it finally sank in that he most likely was not joking about the dirt. I called him and he said, “Sure, I was serious about the top soil. Come on over”. I’ve meet a lot of kind and generous people in the course of pursuing my metal detecting hobby but Mr. Pelton is a metal detectorist dream come true. In front of me stood a pile of dirt and stone, it was about four feet by six feet by five feet high ready to be detected. Mr. Pelton said, “When your finished detecting the dirt as it is call me and I’ll get my backhoe and spread the pile out for you”. I laughed to myself. I couldn’t believe this was really happening. Are people really this nice? Using my eight inch coil I scanned slowly. My expectations were not high but I hoped to find something to justify Mr Pelton going though all of that trouble to help me pursue my hobby. Please find something I said to myself. A few minutes went by and the detector has not beeped. Maybe too much iron masking everything else. Then a solid signal from a few inches down locates a beautiful 1805 American half cent. Amazing, I said to myself. Doesn’t this only happen in dreams? I closely examined the fine detail of the half cent and the smiles kept coming. Still smiling and thankful that I had found a coin to justify Mr. Pelton’s troubles on my behalf, I realized that the coin was not the treasure. The true treasure was Mr. Pelton: the person who went out of his way for me and tried to make my dreams a reality. From now on, I’m calling people that give me permission to detect on their land dream helpers: the best find any detectorist can have. Bob Ellis 10-19-07
Posted on: Mon, 07 Jul 2014 06:52:07 +0000
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