Lost Treasure (March 1999)

This post is part of a series of editorials written by Bert Walsh during his tenure as president and past president of the Shasta Historical Society. Readers are advised that his humor is often irreverent and rarely politically correct. 

Click here for the table of contents for the entire collection of his editorials.

===

This seems like an appropriate time to share a fable of lost treasure with our readers. After all, if we all cooperate in a systematic search, we could well find great wealth, a more opulent lifestyle, and happiness beyond our wildest dreams.

The tale itself is fascinating. It involves a past president of the society; We will call him “Don.” Several years ago, Don was returning home from a St. Patrick's Day observance at Horsetown. It was a foggy day, and rather than cope with hazardous driving conditions Don prudently stopped off at what he took to be a video game arcade. Actually it was the Win River Casino.

Quite possibly the machine that Don decided to play could have been a little out of adjustment, because he noticed that he was accumulating quite a few of what he believed were free games.

Well, time passed pleasantly enough. After an hour or so, a well-dressed, soft-spoken man approached Don, gave him an envelope and escorted him to his car.

The fog seemed to be clearing a little, so Don resumed his way north. After a bit, he became curious about the contents of the envelope the man had given him, so he pulled over and opened it. It is difficult to imagine his emotions when he discovered that the envelope was stuffed with hundred dollar bills.

After the initial shock and astonishment one would expect that thoughts of the many worthy charitable acts were now possible flooded his brain. Fortunately, Camp's Sporting Goods store was closed at this time. But then a horrible scenario came to mind: with all this cash in hand, he was vulnerable. At any moment he could be set upon by hoodlums, muggers, con men, friends, and family and lose it all. What to do? Panic resulted in an inspiration. He drove post haste to the security of the Shasta Historical Society, dashed inside, and slipped the envelope full of bills between the leaves of a book in the library. Save at last! No one would ever find the treasure there.

However, the next morning a complication occurred to Don. In his enhanced emotional state, he had to neglected to note the title of the book that now held the fabulous treasure.

This is why Don now spends most of his time in the Society library browsing through volumes of our extensive collection. This is slow going, because he gets interested and stops to read the books period moreover, we keep adding books to the collection.

I think that our astute readers can now grasp the crux of the problem. Don needs help. It's going to be a rainy spring and except for steelhead fishing there's not much else to do. So let's all get down to some really serious library browsing. This could be rewarding in more ways than one. Several of our books are quite interesting.

--BTW