Treasure Hunting

The Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center in Townsend will be getting one awesome donation this week. Coming from Mike Williams, a resident of Venice, Florida, is his father Charlie William’s Whiskey Still. A special building has been built by the Heritage Center to house the Still and the information about its origin and operation. It has been reassembled as closely as possible to its original form for the exhibit, which opened this week.

Charlie Williams lived just outside of Townsend, rumor has it “it was just far enough off all beaten paths that they wouldn’t just stumble onto it by accident.” But there was a good reason to try - Charlie was known for making “some of the best hooch in the hills.”

Charlie learned the skill of making Whiskey when he was just a young boy but three things made his Whiskey stand out from all the others:

The Still was operated by Charlie for 20 years, and he closed it down as recently as the late 1980’s. The Still was capable of handling as much as 450 gallons of mash and could produce 88 to 95 gallons of whiskey per run, which was about every six days.

Mike Williams, 60, said he got his first taste of moonshine at age 4 and missed his senior class photo at Townsend High School in 1965 because he was helping his father pour concrete for the ceiling of the bunker-style structure that housed the still.

If you’re in the area of The Great Smoky Mountain Heritage Center, make sure to stop by and see this exhibit. It’s certainly treasure in its own right, and is a wonderful tribute to a generation we may never really know.

Read the rest of this lengthy and engaging article at KnoxNews.com’s website, and see more pictures of Charlie and his son Mike.

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An Israeli lifeguard, David Shalom, was taking his regular morning swim off of the Mediterranean coast when he stumbled upon a 2,500 year old relic.

It’s a marble talisman, used to ward off the evil eye, and was found while the young man was snorkeling just off the coast. He immediately turned over the relic to the Israeli archeology society.

Measuring 8 inches in diameter, flat on one side and convex on the other, the white marble disc has a perforated center and the remains of two circles can be seen around the center of it. The circles represent the pupil of an eye.

The coast of the beach the lifeguard was swimming off of was where the ancient port city Yavne-Yam once stood and dates back to the 5th or 4th century B.C. This relic confirms mythological tales about superstitious sailors.

Yaakov Sharvit, director of the Marine Unit of Israel Antiquities Authority, states: “We know from drawings on pottery vessels that this model was very common on the bows of ships and was used to protect them from the evil eye and envy, and was meant as a navigation aid and to act as a pair of eyes which looked ahead and warned of danger. But we thought the eyes were only on fighting ships, not merchant ships. Only four eyes like these have been discovered in the world.”

Sharvit later went on to praise the lifeguard for handing the rare relic over to authorities, rather than pocketing it as many others have been suspected of doing.

I wish we had a picture of this particular piece, there are so many different types of talisman’s for avoiding the “evil eye” that I’m not sure which one is an accurate representation, but I think it’s pretty amazing the art that developed out of the need for protection.

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My post on Friday recognized the fact that one man’s trash may be another man’s treasure. But today I thought we should recognize all the trash that isn’t treasure, but still needs to be found, picked up, and properly disposed of.

Volunteers collected 6.6 tons of trash from Indian River County in Florida on July 19, 2008. The cleanup extended to inlet dives at Sebastian and Fort Pierce, conductd by Operation Blue Streak; and an offshore reef dive, conducted by Florida Oceanographic Society and the Port Salerno Commercial Fishing Dock Authority.

President of the marine association, Marty Laven, states “The effort was spectacular, everyone came away from the event feeling we really made a difference. We made a BIG difference.”

“Overall, 52 fishing nets were retrieved, along with miles of fishing line. Some of the more unusual items include 25 anchors retrieved from the Martin County reef dive, a foreign hand gun, a bag of marijuana, a tiki hut, a boat bow, a piñata, several home made toilets, a solar panel, a mattress and box spring, a Christmas tree, several bicycles, street signs and a kitchen sink. Also noted by several cleanup teams was quite a bit of hurricane debris, including insulation, mobile home pieces and window glass. They also reported finding chairs and buckets high up in the mangroves.”

This event is important for treasure hunters. Many of you may have heard of Sebastian Inlet - it’s home to Mel Fisher’s museum of Spanish Treasure finds. Imagine trying to wade through 6.6 tons of trash in hopes of finding one gold coin! A big thank you should go out to the folks who participating in this event.

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