One fine fall day (I believe
in 1962 or 3) Tim and I went over to Warren and Wayne Kaminski’s place to “goof
around.” As an interesting sideline, at one time in our school class of 54
kids, there were 5 sets of twins! Let’s see… there were Sharon & Karen F.,
Evie and Neva L., Mike & Helen B., Warren & Wayne (the only identical
set of twins), and of course, Tim, and me. I wonder if it was “something in the
water,” or whatever else???? The only way we could tell Warren and Wayne apart
was that one of them had a pair of parallel diagonal white lines on the side of
his glasses stems. The lines looked like
this: //.
I THINK it was Warren that had the lines. Maybe their parents had the lines put
on the glasses so THEY could tell them apart, and/or so they wouldn’t wear the
wrong glasses. Tim and I have often mused on this subject as to which one had
the 2 lines, but I still seem to think it was, indeed Warren. If nothing else,
this subject makes good speculation while we are bored. While writing this
missive, I did a “People Search” on the Internet and found that there are 4
“Warren” Kaminskis’ and 6 “Wayne” Kaminskis’ to get a definitive answer
regarding the two white lines. None of the two lived in the same town, so I
couldn’t narrow my investigation. Since I’d be too timid to contact all of them
to find out which ones were THEM, I may never know. Although WHEN I FINALLY
RETIRE (132 days, 13 hours, 50 minutes, and 39 seconds from now), I may do some
“detective work” and try and track them down to find out. I enjoy doing
detective work especially with missing persons and I seem to have a knack for
it. I ascertain this because as I look at the heels of the pair of boots I am
presently wearing, I certainly “ran” those down in no time! Be that as it may,
as I was saying before I got off on another of my usual “side tracks,” Tim and
I went over to Warren and Wayne’s place to do “whatever.” Eventually we found
our way down to the old stone bridge under S.R. 61 just south of Berlin
Heights. In the winter, we sledded down the hill and in the summer, we “messed
around” Old Woman Creek that flows under the bridge. For some reason we decided
it would be a good idea to dismantle the bridge foundation, which was made of,
mortared roughly rectangular stones. We started to pull out some of the stones,
which were easy to pull out since the mortar was pretty much pulverized from
age. As I recall, we pulled maybe 2 or 3 blocks out, which were at our
eyelevel, when all of a sudden one of us (I forgot who) yelled, “Hey, I
found money behind this block!” Of
course, the rest of us said, “Yeah, right,” in a sarcastic tone. Our
highly skeptical tones quickly changed into excited glee, when sure enough;
there was a wrinkled 20-dollar bill! It’s a wonder that old bridge still stood
after we all frantically started pulling out several more blocks in search of
more money! Alas, after no doubt rendering the bridge foundation unsafe for
traffic, we didn’t find any more money! We did, however, revel and celebrate
what we did find and split the money 4 ways! With his $5.00 share, Tim bought a
baseball mitt, and I bought a speedometer for my bike! Sadly, the old bridge
was destroyed during the “Flood of ‘69,” which was probably just as good since
we rendered it “in a weakened state some 7 years earlier. After that, I
wondered just how much more hidden money (if any) was washed away forever.
After the flood, the bridge was rebuilt with a plain utilitarian giant
corrugated metal pipe. Henceforth from then on, it just didn’t seem the same!
To this day, when I reminisce about this incident, I wonder who stashed the
money there and why. Maybe it was some “poor person” who later went to retrieve
their hidden bounty to buy food only to find it was missing and wondered who
could have possibly found it and took it! Well… if they would have known Tim
and I, they would have had the answer to their mystery; “Only THEY could
have pulled off a caper like this! ” Only us, indeed…
