Sometimes, maybe oftentimes, daily occurrences lead to some vivid dreams. Nocturnal dreams, not your average daydreams, although they, too, can be colored and enhanced by the things we do on a daily basis.
This week I wrote a story on a local man finding a coin that could be worthless or worth a zillion dollars. That, of course, set me to day dreaming. It also led to a really vivid, brilliantly colored, almost 3D dream last night.
Everyone dreams of finding a treasure, especially as a child when we actually go treasure hunting on beaches or vacant lots or in our own backyard, much to out parents’ disdain. Some children never grow up, maybe they live in Never, Never Land or Munchkin Land, and they never give up their quest to find buried treasure.
I read recently about two English men who spent 30 years trying to find a hoard of coins on the isle of Jersey, which is English but only 12 miles from France. After 30 years, they hit pay dirt and unearthed a cache worth millions of dollars. There have been recent treasure trove finds in archeological sites around the world, including Israel, England and Scandinavia.
All this within the last couple of weeks. Then that St. Pauls man finds a coin, that if authentic, will allow him to retire at a very early age.
That, with all the other recent treasure discoveries, sent me into dream mode last night. Dreaming is all the luck I have, it seems. Everyone everywhere is finding diamond rings at the Goodwill Store, and Picassos at the Salvation Army. I’m finding squirrels destroying my bird feeders.
So I guess that it is good to dream. That is the only place “where dreams really do come true,” as they sing in Never, Never Land.
The dream I had last night began with me going to another little town and finding a ruined mansion. That part is actually real, as the little town of Ellerbe has just such a formerly magnificent place with the front facade torn away. The two storey columns and the winding staircase were removed and sold years ago.
But in my dream, the facade was open and several people were touring through and looking at what had been and what still was. I went inside the shell and immediately saw some decrepit, antique furniture, some old pottery jugs (which I used to covet and buy when I had a treasury of my own), and piles of old but useable denim clothes, mostly jeans. People were choosing the denim and so I, too, walked up to the mountain of blue and began to poke around. I didn’t need to buy a pair of jeans, but they were cheap so I got in there and started pulling pairs out. In one, I found a wallet. It was a thick, leather wallet with many pockets and hiding places. I opened it to see if some type of ID was inside, like a driver’s license. I did not see the money hidden inside it. As I opened the wallet searching in vain for an ID, a man walked up beside me and asked me for it and said that money doesn’t belong to you. As I handed it over, I asked what money? He opened some of the hidden pouches and began to partially pull huge wads of large denomination bills from each one. Soon the wallet looked like a cabbage with money flowing out and ruffling the wallet green.
“I didn’t see the money, or know it was there,” I said truthfully, “but shouldn’t I be able to keep it since I found it and since there is no identification inside.”
“Well you can’t keep it, because it belongs to the man and his wife who still live a in tiny portion of this house. They own the stuff you are looking through and so it belongs to them.”
I then accompanied the man upstairs to a small apartment where we met the property owner and his wife. They were small and thin and hungry looking.
The man I was with handed the wallet over, explaining that I had found it. The owner smiled and said, “We lost that wallet and it had all the money that we had in the world in it. We looked everywhere. We are starving, and that is why we were forced to sell part of our house and then our furniture and then our clothes. You saved us. Thank you.”
Then it occurred to me that I had had a fortune in my hands, and that fortune went away as quickly as it had come. I had been rich, but only for a second.
As I walked back down the stairs, I felt that I was the richest man on earth.
I awoke smiling and feeling that I had found the real treasure.
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