My step brother, the boy with silver in his eyes

I won't go into my convoluted childhood history. Let's just say I had a step brother. His name was Scott Mcleish. For a while we were bestest friends. There was a couple year period where the every other weekend I spent at my Dad's place was the highlight of my week because I got to hang out with Scott. I have always remembered the ache I felt as a child not having access to another boy my age. Play dates that parents arrange makes sense to me after my childhood. When my father remarried and his new wife had a son two years older than me I was probably happier than my dad.

One of the first things I that comes to mind when I think about Scott was his uncanny talent for spotting money on the ground. We could be walking around the softball field at Craven Park in Bellaire, MI and he would ston in mid stride and pull a nickel or a dime or a rare quarter out of the dirt the surrounded the clumps of grass that surrounded the playing field.

His talent became an obsession and he when he walked his head would always be on the ground. I never found money that way. I think I was too busy looking around, a talent that often got me in hot water in boot camp at times you were supposed to be staring straight ahead. Eventually you learned to look around by only moving your eyes. Scotts obsession led him to request, as a Christmas gift from his maternal grandparents, a metal detector. He loved his metal detector. Initially he wanted to find money and then he learned you could find items other than mere coins. You could find Hot Wheels cars, rings, watches and soda can tabs. You could find enough soda can tabs to build a car with.

Scott let me use his metal detector on occasion and I remember one time at a beach I found a silver coin that was about the size of a quarter. Scott got very excited, "You found a quarter, Eddie!" Quarters were hard to come by in 1979, they was worth something then. Then we noticed from the polyhedral shape of the object that it wasn't a quarter. From the sand I pulled a shiny new Susan B. Anthony dollar! My goodness, not only was it new and special, in 1979 you could by two comics with a fucking dollar, man.

I remember how thrilled we were to pull this dollar coin out of the beach sand and Scott being as excited about the find as I was. He did desire to demand the quarter from me since it was his metal detector that alerted me to its location but the rule was whoever was holding the detector got to keep what was dug up. I don't remember what I spent the dollar but I do know I didn't have it for very long.