Childhood geocaching

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Are you familiar with geocaching?

Geocaching is an entertaining adventure game for gps users. Participating in a cache hunt is a good way to take advantage of the wonderful features and capability of a gps unit. The basic idea is to have individuals and organizations set up caches all over the world and share the locations of these caches on the internet. GPS users can then use the location coordinates to find the caches. Once found, a cache may provide the visitor with a wide variety of rewards. All the visitor is asked to do is if they get something they should try to leave something for the cache.

But that isn't the point of this thread.

On another thread I discovered that Eva now lives in the neighborhood I lived in 30 years ago. She watches her son race his bike down the same hill I raced down when I was just about her son's age.

I could tell her that if she looked a bit to the north of Deadman's Hill, on the east side of the street, she might find a tree that shows old damage. My friend Charlie and I smashed his car past that tree one night, scaping off a good chunk of bark. I have a scar on my forehead as a momento of that night.

Or I could tell her that if she heads across the pedestrian bridge that was once a railroad bridge that she might find an old combination lock on the left hand side, high up near the old ties, close the end of what was phase one of gentrifying the bridge. That is the lock from my junior high school years. Last time I looked, it was still there.

Feeling nostalgic, I thought I would ask if you've left anything behind from your life that other people might be able to visit.

Can you give us a GPS-memory of what it was you left and how someone else might find it?

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I mentioned the old Eagle's lodge that I and a friend had a gallery and studio and also lived in, in Venice, California, on some thread about cars on a2k. I did this because the fellow who lived and worked downstairs designed the car named the Vector. A person showed up on the car thread who had not posted here before, who said he had lived in the exact space we had. We communicated further in another thread and by email, and it turned out he liked the mural I did in the bathroom... he had lived there shortly after we left, back in the seventies.

Small world. I'll post the link to the threads here later.

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Cool osso!

On the same thread I mentioned above I learned that Joe Nation used to play gituar in the same bar I worked in.

Small world indeed!

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Yes, I read that... on top of the refrigeration units...

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When I moved out of an apartment near 51st & Harvard in 1975 (only lived in Tulsa 4 mo. that time) I left a bicycle in the stairwell. It was blue, one-speed, old even then but still quite usable. It was the source of some bad memories for me, so I no longer wanted it. I wonder who eventually took it and what they did with it? Surely it's not still there after 30 years.

The next time I walk across the Pedestrian Bridge, boomer, I will look for your lock. If it's still there, I'll take a picture of it and post it!

Is the tree with the damage on the east side of Cincinnati? A big, old tree? Let me know and I'll look for it when I go out.

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Here's the thread where the new a2ker and I talk about where we used to live in Venice. The first post reprises our conversation on the car thread in some quotes.

Venice in the Seventies

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That is a cool thread, osso! I like those kinds of connections.

It kind of reminds me of that thread -- was it Jespah? -- about finding the Lady in Red painted on the wall of her house.

Eva, if the tree is still there it would most certainly be a big old tree - it was a big old tree then. The damage that we did to it was scaping the bark off of the tree on the..... south east side....?.... and now that I think about it, the tree is on the west side of the street. We zoomed down the hill, missed the curve and skinned the tree.

Maybe the person who found the bike will wander in here someday and tell it's story!

When my mom and dad moved from Chicago my mom broke her foot. She decided that whatever was in the basement could just stay put.

All my old yearbooks are down there and the little checkerboard bunny that was my tiny child object.

And probably a million and one other things....

The house is mid-block, on Harper, near the University of Chicago.

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I had one of those sawhorses with the flashing warning lights that I left in an apartment in Boston. I used to put it out after I shoveled out my parking space in winter - it worked great to reserve the space as people wouldn't touch it. One time though, I was spotted by some guys who lived in the same building as I was stuffing it in my trunk, and they threatened to beat me up. I bet that thing is still in use.

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I wonder, wonder, wonder....
where those things are, boomer.

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I had a box of silver items from my parents and some special trinkets and my dad's old argus camera packed as part of my stored worldly goods back when I had that studio in Venice. After one of my moves it turned up missing, but I didn't miss it right away. I have my suspicions of who took it, but it could have been two or three people.

Wonder where they are today, all this time later.

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I still have my baseball cards!!!! Probably worth some coin too.

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When I moved from Vt to Chicago I arranged for all of my things to be shipped using a commercial moving company. As I was only a partial shipment they told me I would be sharing the truck with two other moves. I lived in a condo for six months while I scouted for real estate. It was only after I moved into my house that I discovered one of my boxes hadn't arrived in the move. It was mostly replaceable kitchen stuff but one of the items in the box was my recipe card box which included special recipes from family and friends. I was never able to replace some of them, but I hope whoever has them is enjoying them.

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cjhsa, to have those be a geocache, I think you have to let those cards go...

(I rented a house for a while where the owner had a whole room filled with baseball cards and other baseball memorabilia...)

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True. But I still smile when I find them in the basement. Wink

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Oh I'll bet someone is enjoying those recipes, J_B.

And baseball cards would be a wonderful thing to find.

I've read a few times about people doing home renovations and finding things built into the walls.

And what was that movie about the ham radio guys who figure out that they are talking over time and something is hidden in the house....

And the story about John Kennedy Toole's mom finding the manuscript for "A Confederacy of Dunces" under his bed, after his suicide....

It all makes me feel like hiding some things away.

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boomerang wrote:

I've read a few times about people doing home renovations and finding things built into the walls.

one house my sister and brother in law lived in had been built in the early twenties, in the basement my brother in law found a complete list of coal deliveries for the first ten years of the houses existence, the owner had logged how much coal and what it cost in pencil on the back of a wooden door, my brother in law thought it was pretty cool and cleaned it up and varnished over it to perserve it further

a family i know have a similar tale, the house they live in was built around the original family farm house that dated back to the early 1800's, they kept one door untouched, it was originally the door to the larder, and on the inside is a hand written weather log that covers a thirty year period from the end of the 1800's into the early 1900's, the log had been kept by my friends great grandmother, really cool stuff

Childhood geocaching

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