Arrowheads and magic Eyes or How to Grow Up to Be What You Want to Be

I wasn’t very good at spotting arrowheads. I grew up on Lake Norman in North Carolina. Each winter the water was allowed to recede in preparation for spring rains. During this time of year, a large,shoal would reveal itself.  It reached out from the shore at the top corner of our cove and extended straight out about 200 yards. Not a sandy shoal like you see near the coast. This shoal was a mucky red clay. Thousands of mud coated rocks and stones covered nearly the entire expanse.

My neighbor, Ricky, had a huge collection of arrowheads he had found along this seasonal peninsula of mud. The annual rise and fall of the lake water would churn up new relics every winter.  He said that they were really easy to spot. They just stood out, he said like a pronouncement.

So, sporting rubber pull-over-your-shoes snow boots, I made my away along the shoreline to the mucky red sandbar (or claybar, in reality. But that doesn’t sound quite right). Spluck, spluck, splucking my way to the plethora of arrowheads and Native American artifacts waiting to be discovered by me!  This was going to be great! Newspapers would be calling! The elders of the Catawba tribe would probably want to shake my hand and personally thank me for recovering long lost spiritual relics. I’d be an honorary medicine man!

I was a hundred yards out into the stretch of mud when I stopped and took a good look around. My neighbor had said They just stand out. 

I scanned the thousands of arrowhead sized clay-coated rocks. Nothing stood out.  I must not have been at the good spot yet.  I looked across the water back toward my house.  Ricky must have spotted me because he was making his way along the shoreline toward me.

I kept moving.  I had to beat him to the waiting treasure.  He already had enough of his own.

Another fifty yards. Nothing.  Feeling like Yukon Cornelius, I squatted down to get a closer look. Red gravel. That’s what I saw.  Ricky was gaining on me.  He had real hiking boots.  It seemed like an unfair advantage.  I stood up and started out again, only my boot stayed where I had been squatting. Stuck in the muck. Next, I planted my bootless foot straight down into the soppy sludge. Now my tennis shoe along with the foot in it were stuck as well. Ugh. And here comes Ricky.  He is practically gliding over the stickiness in his fancy hiking boots!

“Hey!" He said. “Found anything?”  I was half standing/half squatting and stuck in my own tracks.  He popped my rubber boot out of the mud and held his hand out for me. He pulled me back to full standing position and handed my boot back to me. “You should get some hiking boots." he said with a friendly smile. Ricky had a talent for stating the obvious.

I was about to respond when Ricky exclaimed,  "What did I tell you? They just stand out." Without moving a step, he bent down and picked up a perfectly shaped arrowhead. “Yeh." I lied. “I was just about to pick that one up."  He smiled and held it out to me.  I took it in my hand and studied it. 

It's beautiful. It's really, really old.

And someone a long time ago had carefully crafted it. Had used it to hunt. To feed their family.

I took off the other boot and started following Ricky.  Every few feet he stopped and picked something up.  Sometimes it was nothing. Sometimes it was a broken piece of pottery. Sometimes it was an arrowhead.  Some perfect like mine.  Some with broken tips. But in every case, before he leaned down to pick them up, they all looked like clay covered gravel to me. Ricky had magic eyes.  Nothing stood out.  But Ricky insisted that they did. "What did I tell you? It’s your first time out here and you spotted one right away.” He glanced down at the beautiful relic in my hand.

I thought about Indians. American Indians. I thought about how I had admired them as far back as I  could remember. As a kindergartner, when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, 

I would always say an Indian.  

This used to send my brother into fits of laughter.  I didn’t get what was so funny. Indians were noble.  Indians would tear up on TV when they see the damage done by pollution.

Indians told the truth.

Could Ricky's magic eyes see that I was not being honest about spotting the arrowhead. I was about to confess when he said  “I think we are in the middle of a good spot. Look around you.  They just stand out.”

He guided me with his eyes.  I followed his gaze and Bing! It just stood out! An arrowhead!  I picked it up and held it.  It wasn't as perfect as the first one, but I had found this one myself. Sort of.

We kept looking. He found a few more. I found a couple of pieces of broken pottery. I didn't find any more arrowheads. I had two in my pocket. I really couldn't claim either one of them as true finds of my own.  But I did. I took them home with me and never looked back.

I showed them to people over the years always telling them that I had found them. I kept them in a box of special stuff. A polished rock that seems to magically stay cold to the touch. A piece of petrified wood someone gave me. I even showed these things to my own children and told them that I had found them. Until now, I never gave Ricky with  the magic eyes his due credit.

So, now I am saying to the world that my friend Ricky had magic eyes.

He spotted the beautiful, ancient tools among a vast field of red gravel, not me.

I had no such talent. 

I’m coming clean.  

I’m making an attempt at nobility and honorablity.

Like an Indian.