Metal detectors are making a comeback. Or, at least, they are trying to. No, I'm not talking about the contraption that school children have to walk through to get to class these days. I'm talking about those hand-held devices people use to scour the earth in hopes of finding something that somebody lost. I saw a television commercial last night for a metal detector and it gave me a flashback to 1976 and 1977. My parents divorced a couple of years before that so my dad came to get my sister and I on Saturdays. I was ten at the time. Sometimes we'd go to a skating rink while dad watched from the little cafe next to the rink. Sometimes we'd go to the park and he'd push us on the swings. And sometimes he'd buy a new gadget and we'd spend the entire day playing with it. That's how I first learned about metal detectors.
Dad broke one out one Saturday. He explained how to use it and then he turned it on. Do you remember the noise those things used to make--a high-pitched hum that got even higher when a piece of metal crossed the bottom section? I can still hear it in my mind even though I haven't actually heard one one thirty years.
So, my sister and I took turns looking for "treasure" in the park. We found all sorts of things; a rusty old watch without the band, an old gumball machine ring, a few coins, a few unknowable items, and many many pop tops.
Remember those?
They used to come on top of pop cans and they were shaped like a circle with a tear drop strip of aluminum attached to the bottom that covered the hole you drank out of? You had to peel it off and since it wasn't connected like the pop tops are today, people tended to toss them anywhere, which was probably the reason we found so many of them in the park.
Which brings me to an observation I had as I watched the television commercial. The marketing angle for buying metal detectors has changed. The old marketing angle aimed at greed. "Buy one of these and find treasure!" It worked on this ten year-old boy. But now metal detectors are being marketed to "get you moving" or to "get you out of the house." It never dawned on us all those years ago that we were getting exercise as we roamed the neighborhood park. We were just having fun.
Over the years, my dad bought several metal detectors and they provided for some great entertainment. But the best thing was, we were together, even though it wasn't the best of circumstances.
