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SPRING BREAK 2024 INVESTIGATIVE REPORT:
THE METAL DETECTOR KINGPIN PT. 1:
A SECRET LAIR!!!
It was a lovely day on the beach, sun reflecting off a heavy surf, some hanging ten going on at the popular break (“Gnome Munchies”) and I was just coming off a great session of bodysurfing, my latest pursuit. (It is a myth that surfers have all the fun. I have found, in my full-body wetsuit and with my fins and hand-fins, that bodysurfing can lead to some of the gnarliest and tubular moments to be found in wave-riding.)
I hardly had my wet-suit off when I noticed a flock of seabirds—ospreys, perhaps—circling a strange figure. The figure was dressed entirely in black, in what might have been a long dark hoodie, maybe a robe. All around them people were packing up their umbrellas and beach towels for the day, heading for happy hour at the tiki bars.
The dark hooded figure paid no mind. Their head bowed while slowly sweeping a large, matte-black metal detector back and forth over the sand. Back and forth, they probed, hardly moving forward, backward, nor sideways; back and forth. I noticed the rhythm had a hypnotism about it, the unending motion of a perfect wave’s break, or perhaps an automaton’s programmed eternity, forever strumming guitar at the last Chuck E. Cheese.
Well, you better believe I was piqued. I’d always had a mind to try metal detecting, ever after I stumbled along with those pirates on the wreck of the [REDACTED] near the coast of [REDACTED]. Hell, those golden doubloons are still paying off my mortgage—I would be a fool not to learn a trick of the trade or two from this mysterious fellow!!
But as soon as I approached with a happy “Howdy,” the figure turned away, stowing their detector device in the crevices of their robe as they did, and sprinted off toward the dunes. I noticed the birds flapped away, too.
“Hey!!!” I yelled. “I’m not trying to blow up your spot!! Please, come back, I’ll let you detect in peace!”
Something that day made me chase after them.
I could hardly keep up with the dark figure—in fact, the seabirds were the slower of them, and I tailed those winged beasts up into the rolling dunes. Then they sweeped down low and disappeared. I came over the crest of the last dune and saw the busy boardwalk. Damn! They’d escaped.
But I thought for a moment, about the steep dive of those seabirds. Where could they have been going? Surely they would have crashed into the boardwalk had they continued that suicidal trajectory, causing quite a stir… and yet there was none of the boardwalk, and no sign of them at all.
That’s when I saw the culvert pipe, its lip fringed with moss and a dripping brown gelatinous liquid, under the boardwalk. The grate of it had been roughly sawed away on one side, creating some kind of door. I peered inside it and heard only the echo of the boardwalk above, the trickle of sewage that flowed betwixt my Tevas gurgingly underfoot.
And somewhere off deeper, another noise. It sounded almost like chanting, with a jarring click and clack of metal. I nearly turned away. The tiki bar happy hours were waiting and I needed a Mai Tai, stat. And to this day, I wish I had.
Instead, I stepped into the sewer.
TO BE CONTINUED!!!
[Want to research for your own metal detecting adventure? Visit The Friendly Metal Detecting Forum! Mention a metal detecting fact to your Muchacho Barista for a free drink!!!!]
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