On January 11, in an empty lot near Vernon Park, seven members of the Laclede County Treasure Trackers enjoyed the unusually warm weather as they swept the grass with their metal detectors, looking for buried treasure.
Some listened to their detector with earphones and others through their speakers, which filled the lot with excited electronic tones.
Just a few minutes into a multi-hour hunt, Greg Darrow's detector, a Nokta Makro model called The Legend, signaled him that he was standing near something metallic.
He used his narrow bladed shovel to cut a shallow divot in the sod. Then he used a his "carrot," an small orange-colored detector about a foot long, to pinpoint the metal object.
When he pulled it out, it was just a wet earth-filled oval. However, once some of the mud was removed, Darrow held a girl's gold class ring from 1918, possibly lost by a student when the W.T. Vernon School was still nearby.
For more on this story, see Saturday's LCR.
