Legacy

My name is Gerald Wollenford.  This tale is true and I can only relate to you what has happened so for.  There may be more unfold, but this is what I know for now.

My father-in-law Fred  Barton died about a year ago.  His wife Angelena came to live with my wife and I.  It fell to us the task of disposing of the old house in Wolford, Indiana.  It was an arduous task as many a year of accumulations were there to be sorted through.

One item of interest to me personally was an old crank wall phone.  I ask to have it as it would grace the wall of our den quite well.  In the process of cleaning it up to be remounted I opened it up and much to my surprise there was an unopened package of Beechnut Chewing Tobacco hidden in it.

I thought that most peculiar and a bit amusing.  No one of course knew how long it had been there nor how it got there.  Fred supposedly acquired it from the local Moose Club where he had been a member.  Apparently it was on the wall of the building basement.  The building was slatted to be torn down, so Fred with permission salvaged it.

This made me wonder if anything else was hid out in that old house.  Fred might have had other secrets. Maybe valuable ones.  The first place I checked was a sinking depression in the backyard.  I dug down into it and about two feet down I hit something metallic.  That produced a most interesting old item.  It was like a canister two feet high, cylindrical,  about eight inches across at the top tapering down to about six inches at the bottom.  It had two handles and a place where a spigot had once been.  We couldn’t identify it but thought it might have been something from a military field kitchen.  Past that oddity it was a dry hole as it was apparently just an old cistern filled with trash and covered over.

Well, I decided to look elsewhere.  I looked for floorboards that might come up. Didn’t find any like that.  But for some reason I had a fixation there must be something somewhere.

The next place I tried was the attic, only accessible from a step ladder  to reach a  push up and out of the way hatch cover .  I climbed up and lifted the hatch and got a face full of loose old very dry insulation.  Ah shucks! That was no fun.  I almost abandoned the idea of sticking my head up there, but I did anyway and shined my flashlight around.

When I swung the flashlight to the left  the beam fell upon something bright  and yellow about seven feet in.  Hot dog! I exclaimed, I think I’ve stuck gold.  I quickly retrieved it.  I climbed back down the step ladder and sat it on a table for a closer examination

It wasn‘t as heavy as one would expect gold to be and for good reason, it was a rather plain brass box.  Well I thought, its probably antique and worth something.  It was about the size of a small suitcase. I picked it up and shook it, something rattled a bit and I said, interesting, maybe I got lucky after all, I’ll just open it up and see.

That was easier said than done as it was apparently a trick box.  I turned it over thinking something on the bottom side would offer a clue.  Unexpectedly I  found an envelope taped to the bottom of it.  I opened it up and it contained a short letter from Fred.

The letter stated that while Fred was in France during World War II he came upon a wounded and dying priest.  This priest gave him the box and told him to guard it with his life, never open it, and secrete it in a safe place.  The Priest had said hat the box contained information that would have negative global impact if ever released.  The priest made Fred swear an oath.

Now that was spooky.  Apparently Fred took his oath very serious, or he couldn’t figure out how to open the box.  However I’d sworn no oath so I was determined to get into the box.  Now if that box had a seam anywhere I couldn’t detect one.  Maybe its construction was so perfect as to not show a seam

The box however did have one peculiar appendage. That was on one end there was a slight built in pocket.  Fastened to the box and residing in that pocket was  a fine long brass chain with numerous  little brass pins every  inch and a quarter fastened to it.

The only thing obvious was the little pins were the same diameter as the little holes in the top of the box in a grid pattern of every inch squared.

Okay, I’m not dense, that’s obviously a combination opening affair. But good grief, the combination possibilities would run in to the hundreds of thousands.  No wonder Fred had an easy time of keeping his oath.

That evening the wife and I sat on the back patio pondering the mysteries of the box and the heavens.  Looking at the stars I said look at all those points of light the stars make.  I then remarked how many old cultures put a lot of stock in the constellation of Orion, especially Orion’s belt.  My wife mused “is that so?”  I said absolutely and for whatever reason possessed me I will never know.  I counted the points of light in Orion’s belt; they were the same as the number of brass pins with the box. I laughed out loud and said to my wife, you don’t suppose the top of that brass box is like a blank star chart do you?  That got her tickled and as she laughed at me she said “I think you have been watching to much TV.”

She was probably right, but still the thought intrigued me.  So the next morning I got a large sheet of thin paper and using the side of a soft lead pencil, I made a tracing rub from the top of the box.  It showed every hole in its exact scale.  The next trick would be to make a connect the dot so to speak drawing of the Orion Constellation.

I proceeded to do just that.  It took many hours because I had to draw and redraw. Enlarging and shrinking until it would fit the grid holes on the top of the box.

I then taped the drawing to the top of the box being sure  of proper placement.  Then I proceeded to poke the brass pins through the paper and into the holes until I had pins placed in the right positions needed to form Orion’s Belt.

As I pushed the last pin into place I heard a low pitched click, and suddenly with a fair amount of force the left end of the box swiftly shot out of the rest of the box almost clearing it by one foot.  Must have been spring loaded.  Anyway I was now looking at a tray.  In it was a flat parcel about eight inches wide and twelve inches long, and three quarters of an inch thick.

It was something that had been wrapped and tied with twine then sealed in a heavy coat of wax.  Reminded me of the way some big wheels of cheese were sealed.  Along with the parcel was a fairly heavy brass rod.  It was fifteen inches long and about an inch in diameter.  It would have made a hefty billy club.  Altogether things were getting a bit strange.

I then proceeded to remove the wax from the parcel.  That was a messy job, but I got it done well enough that I could cut the twine and unwrap whatever it was.  I did just that, hoping to find some gold or jewels of course.  No such luck; all I found was an old leather bound journal with a strange symbol embossed on the cover and inlaid with real gold.  Quite a bit for a book cover symbol.

I expect it would weigh a whole whopping tenth of an ounce if smelted off.  Wow! I could go to Las Vegas with all that. I’ll admit I was starting to get a little disappointed.  After all getting that box open took hours, and for what, an old book.

Of course I was always a curious soul so I opened it to see what a profound message it had.  Couldn’t even read the fool stuff as it was written in some old language.  I tried sounded out some of the words and it seemed to me I’d heard those sounds before, on a TV documentary.  Yes, yes I think it may be ancient British or Irish Gaelic.

I have a computer so I went on line and found at a university library site a Gaelic to English translation dictionary of sorts. Availing myself of it I laboriously spent many hour translating  that old book.  The paper in it was unusually well preserved for something I believe was at least several centuries old.  No doubt due to being sealed airtight in the wax.

This is a quick highlight of what it said.  An ancient Irish priest  who identified himself as the caretaker of ancient scrolls containing earth shattering information, claims to have transported same to what we now call the Americas  to be hidden away for safe keeping as to prevent releasing information of what would have been worse than opening  a Pandora’s box.  Now that seemed a little ominous, probably be a matter of opinion.  Anyway, this Andrew claimed to have hidden it near what we now call Nova Scotia on an island called Oak Island.

Of course there was a lot more said by this Andrew person that I won’t bore you with.  Oh yes, he also said to look for the triangular rock with a hole in its center and to drop the brass rod into the hole.  I thought how sweet, maybe the brass rod is a form of money and the rock a piggy bank or something.

Anyway to get to the nitty gritty quicker, let me say, I related this all to my wife.  It turns out she was one well informed lady.  Indeed there was much I had to learn.

She clued me in but good.  She told me that Andrew was St. Andrew, whom legend has it drove out all the snakes from Ireland.

She went on to say that in viewing different segments of the History channel on TV that it was suspected this St. Andrew had made at least three trips to various placers in the Americas even prior to the allurements of some Vikings getting there before Columbus.  I thought that’s nice, big deal.

But it got more interesting quick, apparently my wife was quite the History channel watcher, as she went on to tell about the Oak Island money pit.  Apparently that didn’t mean a pit full of money, but one that apparently the bottom of couldn’t be reached because of water.  It was thought that buried who knows how far down was a great treasure.  Initially the pit was discovered when it was noticed that a large circular area formed a slight depression and for some reason no grass would grow there.

That also piqued someone’s curiosity and so they dug down and after about ten feet ran into oaken logs forming a floor.  All that digging started in the early nineteen hundreds and has been going on ever since until about twenty years ago when the whole idea was abandoned as a hopeless project.  It got called the money pit because of the millions of dollars over the years investors poured into the project trying to get to the bottom of things.  Such investors as Rockefeller, Teddy Roosevelt, John Wayne, and a host of others, were involved.

As the story goes, after about every ten feet of dirt and loose rock being removed there would be another platform of oaken logs.  That continued for about two hundred feet.  There were cave- ins and deaths, but the sturdy treasure hunters persisted on going after it.

It wasn’t much after that when they ran into the water problem; the hole kept filling no matter how much they pumped out.  So to try and figure out where the water was coming from they dumped heavy red paint into the hole.  A lot of red paint and it mixed with the water.  Someone noticed red paint showing up in the ocean on both sides of the island.

They concluded that even though primitive material was used in the periodic flooring/plat forming in the hole that the whole thing was rigged by a superior technology to make sure what was buried stayed buried.

They had hydraulic engineers make drawings to show theory of how everything worked to keep the hole flooded at a given depth.  Apparently that seemed plausible and insurmountable, so the project after about a hundred years worth of trying was abandoned.

The investors had no idea as to what the treasure was.  They figured if someone went to that much trouble it had to be unbelievable.  Speculation ran from the Holy Grail, the Ark of The Covenant,  the original works of Shakespeare, that one was ridiculous of course.  It was even thought that the Templar Knights might have buried whatever as they were also thought to have fled Europe with vast treasure and it was speculated based on odd findings that they too had gained a presence in the Americas prior to Columbus.

All of that which my wife had related was very interesting.  My greedy little self started thinking.  First I thought we have a very old book here and if we could document/authenticate that it was in the hand of St. Andrew it would be worth a fortune, a very large fortune.  On the other hand the government might declare it a National Treasure and simply confiscate it to put in the Smithsonian.

On the other hand we had the brass rod and instructions. My wife and I pondered about what to do for a month.  We decided to close out our savings account, take the money and head for Oak Island.

We took a plane from Indiana to Toronto, Canada and from there a smaller plane to Nova Scotia. Once on Nova Scotia we had to pay for a chauffeured jeep ride over bumpy back roads to get to a seaport.  That was a costly jeep ride.  The locals knew how to gouge tourists.  Anyway we got to the seaport and went to find a boat that would take up to Oak Island.

Another unpleasant surprise, oh my aching pocket book.  Oak Island is privately owned.  And while tourists are tolerated, even though there are few of them, you have to pay an exorbitant  fee to spend two days on the Island.  We located the owner whom by coincidence was the only one who had a boat that was permitted to land on Oak Island.  Yes, you guessed it, another exorbitant fee.

It wasn’t hard locating the pit, but you couldn’t get very close as it was all fenced off.  Probably was for safetys sake.  I mused that it the sight people pay big bucks to see?  Well I guess we are all entitled to be suckered once in our life.  Anyway, we didn’t come to see the pit, we came to see the triangular rock.

That was the next big question.  Where is it, how big is it? I mean after all, that island was about eighty square miles.  With only two days to find it and no idea as to what direction to go to even start.  I was beginning to feel clueless and stupid.  I’d probably blown our savings for a big fat nothing.

We stumbled around in expanding  circles hoping to spot a rock of some significance .  No luck and it was getting dark so we holed up in the hut provided for tourists to get out of the weather.  It did have some firewood and a small fireplace.  That was it.  Now we knew why we were advised to bring sleeping bags and some camper style food stuffs in our back packs.

We sat there by the firelight eating cold beans out of a can while I was near tears.  I said it’s to bad that smarty pants Orion can’t tell us where the rock is.  My wife got a stunned look like she’d just gotten a divine revelation.  She said, maybe he can.

I admit I’m a little sarcastic sometimes, and I was thinking, what did she do, eat a bad Taco. It takes me awhile for my brain to work sometimes; but she said do you have your compass with you?  I said I did.  She said take it outside find the constellation Orion and hold your compass up.  Take note of where it is pointing and then take note of where in relation to that Orion’s belt is pointing.

I thought that’s one whale of a long shot, but I couldn’t offer a better idea so I did ask she suggested.

Next morning with only the rest of the day to find the stone in, I held up the compass and took a bearing.  We followed that for about three miles over relatively open ground with nary a prospect in sight.

About a quarter of a mile farther we came to a stand of Oak trees.  I guess that is why they called it Oak Island.  Anyway as we got closer we could see a wee bit of a path and at the beginning of it was an upright stone like the old stone fencepost used on the prairies.  It had some sort of rune carved into it.  Interesting, but not triangular.  It did raise our hopes a bit however.  Then about a hundred yards down the path we came to an opening.

In the middle of that opening there was a triangular rock.  Other than its shape there was nothing spectacular about it, but it did have a hole in the center of the same diameter as the brass rod.

I admit, we both did a dance of joy, hooted and hollered like kids with a new toy. Then after those ceremonies were over it was time to get down to business, so I pranced right over to the rock and dropped the rod in the hole.  I cocked my ear as to hear when it hit bottom.  But all I heard was rhythmic clicks like switches being thrown.  Was the rod tripping switches?  Then I heard a rumbling, it was scary so I hollered to my wife run for it, something’s breaking loose.  We made it to the edge of the clearing and ducked behind a couple of trees only peeking a little bit.

Without warning great amounts of water was gushing up and out from under the rock.  This kept up for several minute’s, the ground was getting to be a muddy mess.  The stone started sliding in the mud to the side and then the water shot even higher for a couple of minutes. Then without notice it just stopped.  Sitting in the center of the spot where the rock had been before it slid to the side was a metallic circular platform with something sparkly sitting in its center.

We sloshed through the mud, no easy task, and as we got there and looked down, we saw a box.  It was identical to the one we found in Fred’s Attic except for the fact it was encased in a clear glass like material about an inch thick.

Well whatever it was, it was ours now.  I emptied out my back pack and with some effort managed to squeeze it in that space.  We went back to the boat landing and waited about four hours for the boat to pick us up.  It was right on schedule.

The boat Captain who was also the island owner ask if we had a good time.  We said we did, that it was very interesting walking around a place with so much history and legend.  He said that is what most say.  He then said I suppose you found the treasure.  Being somewhat honest, I said we sure did, but also being a devious chap I added we’d have to send back a cargo ship to hold it.  That got a big laugh.

I figured what we had, was for us to know and him to not find out.  We got back home to Wollenford with our precious cargo intact.

Once in the privacy of our home we decided to open it.  We bet its pins would pattern the same as the other box for opening.  But first we would have to get through the encasement material.

Seeing how it was glass like I figured a couple of hammer blows should break it off.  No such luck

It was very, very hard, and to this day I have no idea as to what that material was.  But my Daddy had taught me that brittle things break easy so be careful in handling them.

I said maybe I can make brittle work, if I can make the encasement material brittle.  Sometimes I do have a flash of genius, so I stuck the whole thing in our chest style freezer and left it there over night.

I took it out in the morning and it was cold to touch and apparently now very brittle as two hammer taps and it shattered into pieces; like taking candy from a baby.  I gave myself a good pat on the back.

Then the wife and I together with much anticipation got the Orion Constellation drawing we had used on the first box and placed it on the second box.  I inserted the pins and bingo it opened just like the first box.

Dagnabit, there was  still no treasure.  Just three old scrolls.  Well seeing as how I still knew where I could go on line and translate ancient Gaelic thereby, I might as well see what they say.

Is someone out there trying to play games and confuse me.  It’s not Gaelic.  Possibly ancient Aramaic, not sure. Well translating was never one of my finer skills, but I’m making an effort.  So far and that’s not saying much.  I’ve translated to the words Anak, Anakim. Medicine, and the date 2047.  I have no idea as to what’s being talked about. But if I get it figured out I will let you know.

Meanwhile the wife and I discovered the boxes were valuable antiquities and we sold them (minus their contents) for a pretty penny. Pretty enough to let us retire very early and live a life of opulent leisure. Now don’t get upset, I told you I’d let you know as I’m able to translate more.