Rake Tree and the Buried Treasure

As I was clearing out the hideously overgrown front yard this weekend, I stumbled upon things you cannot imagine. And I am not talking about things conceived in nature (although those can be a little scary too -we saw a spider on Saturday that looked like it belonged in the Amazon rather than New Jersey), I'm talking about mounds of trash. Weird trash at that. You've already seen the old fashioned adding machine. Hiding in the bushes, I also discovered an Adirondack chair, an igloo thermos, a roll of fiberglass, a car door, motor oil and metal poles, buckets filled with some sort of black oily substance that I think may have been moonshine, and millions of soda cans just thrown all over the place. My favorite, however, was definitely Rake Tree.

Initially I saw the handle of this thing lodged in the tree and thought it was a ski pole. I tried to pull it out but it was not moving. I assumed it was just stuck under the gross pile of leaves and decided to come back to it after I cleared out the vines more thoroughly. Hours later, after tearing down piles and piles of vines with my bare hands, I discovered the end of a rake underneath the vines and the fiberglass roll. I tried to pull it out and then realized that it was on the other end of what I thought to be the ski pole and it had actually grown into the tree. That pretty much sums up not only the state of our farm, but also the state of mind of the man who lived there before us. How do you let a beautiful piece of property fall into such despair for so long that a tree can grow itself around a rake?

My husband and his father were wondering the same thing down at the barnsite where they were digging a trench. Our questions were answered later that day when we were paid a visit from the neighbor, Tony, who lives across the street and used to be friendly with the owner, Steve. Turns out Steve hung himself in one of the barns after years of fighting with his wife then discovering that she was sleeping with the farm hand. Apparently Steve was so upset with her that he not only hung himself, but he took all of his money out of the bank so that she could never touch it. According to Tony, local legend has it that he buried a million dollars in cash in a cooler somewhere on the property. Now, I am the most cynical person in the world and obviously don't believe that one day Tim

and I are going to come across a million dollars cash, but the evidence does point to that fact that poor Steve, God rest his soul, lost his marbles in the end and it seems possible that he could have done something as bizarre as burying cash on the land. So while I'm certainly not going to consider it an asset when I figure out my worth for the gov next April 15, there is definitely a teeny tiny part of me that thinks that it is POSSIBLE. And that will carry me through the darkest hours of weeding and tearing down vines and cleaning up trash. Because believe me, it can get very dark when you're all alone for 6 hours with a pair of hedge clippers and an endless battle against vines as thick as your ankle.