The lure of the find became life-long obsession. Not pay dirt, some rich vein
Nor new species botanical, entamological, memorial in Latin for his name.
Not ocean bounty lodged among the sea-wrack, salvage, ambergris
Not Universal Theorem, cancer cure, rare herbs medicinal. Neither fame
Nor riches drove the impecunious lad but knowledge, things to pull apart.
Transistors, integrated circuits, printed circuit boards had yet to come
And with them present-day reliability. Valves remained the electronic kings
Aging everything around them with their radiated heat, aging themselves.
Late Friday afternoon the radio shops would empty bins of parts replaced
Send the apprentice with them to the dump. These were the treasure sought
Saturday morning, milking done and breakfast over, cows up at the top farm,
Came the odyssey, the long cross-country trek, the sneak through private properties
And High-School grounds to reach his goal, his smoke-enshrouded Eldorado.
No compactor/bulldozer driver to claim the spoil his own. This was the open range.
Thank God for understanding parents. Almost everything hauled home was junk.
But half a century on, the magic lure of finds and dumps remains stuff of his dreams
An unsuspected room in an old house holds twenties’ radios, each one like new.
A tumbling shed reveals his old belove’d twenty five Chev tourer.
His Triumph Speed Twin turns up too. And always there are dumps richly endowed.
Where fossicking is banned, he makes himself invisible, indulges anyway.