Hello Everyone
Here's a yarn I once heard from a stranger. Is it true I do not know.
The hot humid bar with the overhead fans spinning like aircraft propellers at the Madang Yacht club in PNG gave very little relief. It was the hot time of year and it was unbearable. You lived in altered states, where sleep, awake and dreaming became one. Sweltering in a hot and steamy humidity.
In my early morning stupor of loss of sleep and alcohol I looked around through my blurry eyes breathing the air full of water and wondered how did I end up among the usual group of sorry excuses of humanity.
Madang at that time and place was one of places in world were you would meet all kinds of people from far away places you never heard of. There were miners, military personel, Drillers, ex mercenaries and kinds of messed up bureaucrats all with a story to tell
It was commonly said it you stuffed up in life once too often and had no place to go, no place to hide. Madang was the place to be. It was in this surreal world of early morning hard core group of misfits where the stories got more exaggerated as the alcohol flowed .
An Middle aged man with white receding hairline with face as burnt as brown as native stuck out his hand to shake mine. With a sly grin he reveled his impeccable white teeth. He introduced himself with an New England Accent commenting on the heat as the sweat poured off his forehead.
Dennis from Connecticut was an American Geologist sent out to Papa New Guinea for an American Mining company in the highlands. Being a driller, the topic started from gold mining and drifted treasure hunting as such.
Dennis in his good humor laughed at my mention of life's missed opportunities. And he asked me a riddle "When is a treasure not a Treasure" I must admit I looked at quizzed and suspicious at the his strange enigmatic question.
He grinned like the Cheshire cat and told me the following tale.
As a young man studying for collage, he under the pressure of his parents in his study needed a few days off. Being late in autumn he went with his dog to spend a couple of days staying at one his parents friends cabins on a beach somewhere near Cape cod.
He roamed the deserted wildly storm lashed beaches with his dog running around a his heels taking in the cool salt air of the gray Atlantic. His dog a golden retriever fetched anything he threw as he walked over miles of deserted beaches.
The therapy worked and wind and salt air had did their thing. He and dog explored and beach combed along the coast. On his last day he discovered a low embankment where the wind and waves had washed the sand away. In this embankment was a small niche where there was the remains of a cotton leather pouch. on picking it up it fell apart. About 100 little clay balls fell out.
What were they he thought perhaps some old fishing sinkers? he scooped them up and placed them in his pockets and continued his walk. In his idleness in walking along the water edge with the dog running after seagulls, he started skipping the clay balls like a flat stone across the water. Until most of the clay balls had gone.
Utterly refreshed from is autumn break. He returned home with a fresh vigor to study. In sorting out his clothes for the washing, the two remaining clay balls fell out and rolled alone the floor. He bent down to pick them up and realized one of clay balls had broken in two revealing a Ruby inside.in panic he broke open the other one and revealed a diamond.
For a moment the gears in his head put two and two together and he realized in horror the flash back of him casually throwing away nearly 100 clays balls into the ocean.
So you see Dennis said me in voice of bitter irony "When is a treasure not a treasure? When you are not prepared to look!"
And with that, he winked at me and disappeared into the crowd of misfits drinking at the bar.
Hardluck.
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