Blood Draw

I believe it was me Uncle Mike what it happened to, but, as they say, no need for facts to get in the way of a good story, so I'll say it was him.

When he was a young man and stationed in South Korea with the US Army, he struck up a conversation with a Republic of Korea, or ROK, soldier who was in his military finery. Uncle Mike was impressed by the man's sword which was part of his dress uniform. "Could I take a look at that?" Uncle asked.

The ROK handed it to him and Uncle dutifully admired it for a moment or two before handing it back. "May I see your hand?" the allied soldier then asked.

Confused, Uncle held out his right hand anyway. The ROK took it and nipped the barest bit from Uncle Mike's right pointer finger, just enough for a couple drops of blood to appear and cause just a bit of pain. "Why'd you do that?" he demanded.

"If I draw my sword I must draw blood," was the explanation.

"Coulda told me that before," Uncle Mike grumbled, understandably.

Buried Cable

Scrap steel cables are worth a few pennies now, so much so that we have a scrap man who regularly stops by the old barn to pick up what we have. Indeed if I have enough of a load I'll take a bunch in myself. Yet that wasn't always the case.

I remember when I was a small boy, perhaps 7 or 8 years old, that me Pops had accumulated a lot of old scrap cables and no scrap dealer would take them. He could not pawn them off on anyone. If I had to guess, I would say he had several thousand feet of old steel cable, the bulk of it in short lengths of  8 to 10 feet. What to do, what to do.

He hired who were then two of his younger brothers, me Uncle Mike and me Uncle Jim, to bury them. 

As I said, I was little. One morning Uncles Mike and Jim arrived in my parents back yard with spade shovels and a truck nearly overloaded with bent and gnarled cables. They worked hard, digging a trench about 12 feet long, 8 feet wide, and I think about 10 feet deep. When they had done that, they laid all that cable into it until it was nearly half full. Then they covered it all up, tamping it down as they went.

Now I ask you, what might some archaeologist at some future date think of that mess of steel? What outlandish conjectures would creep into his mind when slowly dredging through what was once 4761 Avery in Detroit? Was it as mass of communication cables from an ancient civilization? Part of a scientific experiment whose point was lost to history? The remnants of a forgotten religious ceremony?

Nah, just some iron trash buried by two teens hungry for money and paid for the task by their older brother. But future history is fun to contemplate, isn't it?