I was raised like most folks in the 1940's and early 1950's. We raised all our food. Mom would can everything from beef to beans but peas was always what we had most of. Mom would ask us, "Well, what do you want for supper, Crowder, Purple Hulls, or Whippoorwills?"

We sold corn that we raised every year. We would gather it in a pickup truck then take it to Russellville and sell it. The place where we brought the corn was in a big building with a blacksmith shop where Dad had his plows sharpened and mule shoes set up. I always liked going to sell corn at that place. They weighed the truck then Dad would back it onto a platform. They would tie the truck on it and then let down the tail gate, lift the front of the platform up in the air and dump the corn into a big hopper. Then they would weigh the truck again.

This place was on a small creek bank. There was a man by the name of Bob Taylor that lived with his wife and son behind the blacksmith shop in a gypsy wagon. He was a very old man and Dad had known him for years. On one of our trips to sell corn, Dad and I was a setin' on the bank of the creek when `Ole Uncle Bob came out of his wagon and joined us. He knew that Dad was a Treasure hunter so he told this story:

One day in about 1906 or 1907 he was in a pool hall and bar. There was just one other fellow in the place so they began to talk. The old man told Uncle Bob he was going to meet some kin of his that were coming from Oklahoma. The train was near Harrison but having to cross the Boston Mountains, was just too much for them. They road the mail coach to Russellville instead. At daylight the next day they would arrive, but would go home the next day and not be back this way again.

The old man was mad that his kin folks did not show up, so he told Uncle Bob a story about him and three other men that road through there some years back after pulling a holdup near Hot Springs.

When they got near the Arkansas River at Dardarnelle, they were afraid they might get caught while fording the river, so they took four hundred dollars hard money, one-hundred a piece, and put it in a shirt. One of the other men cut his arm on a tree limb and tore the shirt. They took it and put the money in it. Then they swore if they had to split up and return for the running money, they would just take one-hundred and leave the rest for any of the rest who needed it.

He told Uncle Bob they found a gum tree that had a hole in the bottom of it, dug it out a little more and placed the shirt with the money inside, then put a rock over it. The tree was next to the river on the south side next to a small branch. They and his partners had no trouble getting to Missouri, so he figured the money was still there.

That was all Dad needed to hear. "When are we going, Bob?" he asked.

The next day we had a long rod, pick, two shovels, and high hopes of finding that gold, but we looked for about a year off and on and found nothing. We got so's we would go there a fishing and to look for the money.

Then one day my little brother, Donald came a running. He had found the loot. It was twenty silver dollars all from the 1800's, not the four-hundred we were looking for, but enough to hook Dad, Don, and me. Wish I still had the coins but this was 1954 or `55' so they went very fast.

Jess Mason, Arkansas