Thanks for Visiting One Too Many Potatoes...

Thursday, February 18, 2016

The Adventures of Danny and the Strange Case of the Haunted Dishes

It was unusually warm for a mid December Saturday as I guided my ship into the cold waters of the St. Louis River off the Boy Scout Landing in Duluth.  Two fishing poles (one rigged for panfish and one for marlin), and two cameras (both rigged for picture taking) accompanied me on my voyage.  I paddled the Vanderyak, a 12 foot piece of plastic in the form of a sit-on-top kayak, lazily down-river to the old Oliver Bridge.   It is indeed rare when you can find open water in December away from the Big Lake they call “Gitche Gumee Bear.”

It was around noon when I began my journey, and I couldn’t shake the odd scene from my mind that I had seen only minutes ago.

Just prior to my launch and about 100 feet from the boat ramp I had spotted what seemed to be a lost treasure of several china cups and saucers just off shore in about 3 inches of water.  It was an odd sight indeed.



Could it be the remnants of some ancient ship wreck?

Did they come from the Titanic? 

Or did a bunch of burly Finnish fishing guys from Duluth decide to have tea and crumpets as they waited on a catfish strike and just threw everything into the water when their wives showed up?

I am not sure.  Nevertheless it was such an odd sight that I decided to investigate further after returning with a large catch of bluegills and marlin.

I fished for awhile by the old bridge but then realized that, irrespective of the warm weather conditions, it was December and any marlin or bluegill with a half of a fish brain would have long ago headed out to the Atlantic via Lake Superior and the St. Larry Seaway (with just a smidgeon of a left turn by Niagara).

So I paddled back to the landing. 

When I was within about one half mile from my destination the eagle that I had been chasing earlier with my camera suddenly swooped down out of the overcast sky and landed on the bow of my craft.  Which is toward the front.

And looked at me with his eagle eye.

“Danny!!!” said the eagle in a stern voice with a Boston accent, “Do not go near the dishes!”  And then he flew away.

“That’s odd,” I said to myself.  “Why would an eagle from northern Minnesota speak with a Boston accent?”

Continuing on to the landing, I ignored the wisdom of the old eagle and decided to investigate up close and personal those mysterious dishes.

What I saw astounded me!  The dishes, which just a couple hours prior were semi-submersed in ice-cold December water, were no longer covered with water!



My first thought was, “Where did all that water go?”  I mentioned this to my son-in-law a week later and he said something that to him made a lot of sense.  “There’s a dam on that river, right?”  I just stared emptily at him as I tried to decipher his line of reasoning.

One thing I did know for certain -- the mysterious disappearance of the water had to somehow be connected to the mysterious appearance of those dishes.

In fact, the water had gone down so much that, as I eased my ship toward the archeological site, my small craft became lodged in the sea bed. Eventually the Coast Guard sent a fleet of Fisher Price tugboats to assist me in my plight and I was able to free the Vanderyak. 

I went back to the landing, loaded my kayak onto the truck and commenced to investigate the now-on-dry-land dishes.  There were several cups and saucers with markings that they had been handcrafted in England and a place called “Avon.”  I carefully loaded the fragile cargo onto the truck and then I called my wife with the news that “nope I didn’t catch anything but I had a wonderful time” (which is my never-changing voicemail message on my cell phone). 

But then I told her about the dishes.  She seemed mesmerized as I related the scene to her and the fact of the disappearing water and that I had found some sort of ancient unburied treasure in the form of cups and saucers.   Maybe it was the money pit from the famed Oak Island Treasure. (Check out The History Channel [channel 63] at 7PM Central Time every Tuesday!)

After I got home my wife examined the dishes and was astonished.  (Ok, maybe “astonished” is a little bit too dramatic; but she was definitely “stonished!”)

The next day I put the muddy, dirty dishes in a small box and placed them next to the desk in the basement family room.

The following Friday, December 18th, my wife and I drove to Phillips, Wisconsin for the family’s Christmas get-together.  We had a wonderful time!

When we arrived home that Sunday evening, what my wife witnessed as she opened the basement/family room door startled her.    I was still unpacking the car when she rushed out to the garage and uttered dramatically, “MAYBE THOSE DISHES REALLY ARE HAUNTED!”  

As she gesticulated wildly and nonsensically about a horse being in the middle of the floor and how did it get there and is it connected to the dishes and should we call Horses-R-Us or the Titanic discoverer Robert Ballard, I on the other hand reacted with a totally calm Sherlock-Holmes-like demeanor when I opened the door.

“YOWZZZERRRSSSS!!!!WHATONEARTHISGOINGONINTHEBASEMENT!!!!” 

Somehow, the Victorian era reproduction horse/toy was in the MIDDLE OF THE FLOOR LOOKING AT US.  And that horse hasn’t moved off from the shelf it was on for years!  (The proof is in the dust!)



And to make this story even more dramatic and mysterious and scary, for that horse to get from the shelf to the middle of the floor it would have had to have fallen off the antique book it rests on, hit two cameras on top of the computer tower, avoided an assortment of desk paraphernalia like three-ring binders and a hole punch and speakers and a broken Hershey bar and dried out donut, avoided lots of stuff on top of the filing cabinet; then on its way off the desk missed two camera bags and a computer bag and rolled out into the middle of the floor unbroken and upright.  All the while positioned to look directly at us when we opened the door!

After the hair on the back of my neck went back to its normal position, I surveyed the scene again and alleviated all of my wife’s fears with this simple bit of wisdom, “Hey the Vikings won!  Who cares if the basement’s haunted?”

(Note: the events stated above are ALL TRUE except for these – I didn’t go fishing for marlin, I didn’t have a beak to nose conversation with an eagle, the Coast Guard never did send any tubgoats, and there WASN'T ANY DUST on that old book!)