Backwoods Buried Treasure

Everyone has heard stories of lost treasure. Sometimes the stories are beside a campfire on dark and star-filled nights. On other occasions, the stories might be from a faraway land and across oceans of distance and time. When the story is from a firsthand witness, however, and not a fable or urban legend, the spark of possibilities can truly ignite the imagination.

This story of Buried Treasure begins in the South, where trust is hard to come by. Many of the immigrants that came to America from Ireland and Scotland settled in the mountains of Appalachia and the valleys below. The immigrants came because they wanted something new, something better, and many came because trust at home was also hard to come by. For generations in Europe, if wealth became a noticeable acquisition, someone was always trying to find an angle and take it away. This could be anyone from the government to the most unscrupulous of thieves. When it comes to money anywhere, trust is vital, but when it comes to secrets about money, that’s the stuff of Buried Treasure.

When the twin brothers started out as automobile mechanics after the war, they had no idea the old garage where they began would evolve into a wildly successful car dealership. The twins were always hard-working and honest. They sold cars, trucks, and tractors at a fair price, and whenever a customer was ready to upgrade and buy something new, the twins were there like a family member for every single transaction of every business deal. After two decades of selling cars, trading for trucks and tractors, and even branching into riding lawn mowers, the twins had a thriving business that was a true cash cow.

The twins grew up without electricity or running water. They only had six years of schooling before Papa said it was time to go to work clearing new ground with a team of horses. These two boys, when the year was prosperous, received a single peppermint candy cane for Christmas. This was the history and background of two very successful southern boys that were now middle-aged twins and car dealers.

When the 1960s turned into the 1970s and young men and women around the nation were calling themselves hippies, growing their hair, playing in the mud at giant music festivals, taking drugs called acid, and listening to very loud music that was beyond comprehension, the two brothers felt they had better be ready for anything. They also decided with all of the madness all around, they needed an ace-in-the-hole and something to fall back on if the government ever screwed up and there was another Great Depression.

This was when they spoke to one of their employees at the dealership and they swore him to secrecy. The plan was to meet at the dealership just before midnight. The plan actually started two years earlier when the brothers were worried about everything in the changing nation and started stashing away cash. There was a ton of cash in those days because the customers of the car dealership were also worried about almost everything in a drastically changing political climate, and they did not trust banks, especially banks in places like New York City.

After two years, the twins had a pile of cash, and they were ready to hide it away in case of misfortune. This was where the trusted employee came in. He was the best mechanic and welder in the dealership, and everyone knew his welding jobs never failed.

When the twins met Clyde, the welder, it was almost midnight at the dealership, and the twins had four large canvas bags filled with cash. Clyde was also well prepared. He had a thick steel trunk he had been working on, complete with a valve for compressed air and a pressure gauge.

After the four bags full of fifties, hundreds, and twenties found a resting place in the bottom of the steel trunk, Clyde tuned up the new electric welder and sparks began to fly. When Clyde was finished, and the white and blue flashes of the welding rods were complete, the twins hooked up an air hose to the valve on the trunk and filled the newly welded vault with compressed air. After half an hour of carefully watching the gauge on the new vault, and the reading a constant and steady presence of air pressure, everyone knew the steel trunk was now airtight. If the trunk was airtight, the three mechanics reasoned it would also be watertight and the cash inside would be safe from the elements for many years.

The trunk with the cash then began to rise with the dealership tow truck and was soon hanging by the hook and the cable that was normally used for towing cars. Another much smaller bag was for Clyde the welder with his agreement to never speak of the steel trunk, the welding job, or the cash. Clyde agreed and drove away with his money under a full moon and a sea of stars.

The timing was perfect. It was the beginning of summer and after Memorial Day, and everyone knew the ground was ready for plowing gardens, digging graves, and hiding a million dollars somewhere in the ground near the Great Smoky Mountains.

The twins chose midnight for the task of the treasure because they knew there would be little traffic on the backcountry roads. Even if Clyde had tried to follow and find the vault, he would have been the only one following because there were no other cars or trucks after midnight.

An excavation was already prepared next to twin oak trees that were already older than the twin brothers. When the new steel vault landed in the deep crater and disappeared under the stony soil, there were only two souls alive that knew where to look when the government screwed up and cash was once again king.

In the years that followed the midnight of Backwoods Buried Treasure, history cycled into a new era. The divided nation and the hippies settled down, and the twins became even more successful. After another twenty years, the twins could not remember where the two oaks stood or where the welded steel vault waited with the Backwoods Buried Treasure. After another decade, Clyde the welder was the witness who told the story to his grandchildren.