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images courtesy of Dave Young
for the full set, visit his Cooler Crew Photos web site.
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January 1999 STBL Gathering
Attendees (Names often given as Water Cooler Message Board handles): Eags and her friend Vickie, Eags son Magnus and his friend Brent, MJ, Green and her friend Sue not the Vet (SnotV), Radar, Dave Young, Ian and his family - Micki, Kollin and Kris, Mom and Dad, Reid - aka Goat Boy, SueBee and SueBee's Honey and his friend, last years medallion finders - Maureen Hursey, her husband Dan and her brother Steve, Inks and Terry Valentine, and two families totaling five people (including SnoHuntress and Marie G. Clark) that came because they knew we'd be there! I sure hope I didn't forget anyone. That makes 29 people!.
It was great seeing so many people all suffering from medallion fever. Some were people we knew before and others were new friends.
The two families that totaled 5 attendees included a young man named SnohunterJR who had a special Coleman shovel he brought to show the rest of us. He is a serious hunter! They had folders of information they had printed out from our web site. It was wonderful to see all that information being put to good use and being noodled over. These families have only hunted a couple of years, but they have medallion fever big time!
Some might recall Reid is the hubby of Cheryl Straight who posted quite often during last year's hunt. They had also gone to Duluth with us for the Fitger's Bock Hunt. On that note, Ian's son, Kris, found one of the three bocks found at Fitger's. That is a family of serious hunters!
Sue not the Vet (SnotV) had Winter Carnival buttons to sell. That was great. People without buttons yet had a chance right then and there to get them. (No scalping, we promise, okay Winter Carnival organizers?)>
It was great seeing Maureen and Steve - the resident royal family members who found the medallion last year - and to meet Maureen's hubby, Dan. A couple Cooler Crew members touched them, hoping their good luck last year would rub off on them for this year.
Most of the evening was spent visiting with regulars, catching up with others from last year and meeting new folks. We had a few drinks, ate dinner, and continued visiting.
We had hoped to find a modem connection for someone's cell phone, but couldn't get one of the right type in time and within anyone's budget. We wanted to go live to "The Medallion Hunt" board from Patrick McGovern's when the clue came out at 11:30 p.m. Our plan B was to have Patsfan (from Missouri) call Mom's cell phone at 11:30 with the clue.
Shortly after MJ got home, she had logged on and found the clue had been posted - several hours early! She called Mom on her cell phone and gave her the clue. Green talked to her and would not believe that it was real. How could Mom Planet post the clue so early? This must be a hoax.
Then Mom's phone battery went dead. How was Patsfan going to call us? We noodled that for a bit and Eags came up with a plan. She called her brother, talked him through posting her cell phone number on the board for Patsfan and then we waited. Not long and Patsfan called! Eags then had her brother delete the message. It was so nice of Patsfan to call with the clue. He is one of us, even though he's separated from us by a couple of states.
The clue was the same! It was not a hoax! We could hardly believe what happened. It turns out the clue was posted on the official medallion clue board at the Pioneer Planet and then taken down again. Our guess is that an early posting of the clue will not happen again during the hunt.
Once we knew we had the clue, those that were still at McGovern's left and went to check out the Cooler Crew Mobile that Mom's employer is lending us for the hunt! It has a potty, a stove and fridge, a furnace and seating so we can warm up while we drink our coffee or hot cocoa!<
The hunt is on!!!
Our next gathering will be our 2nd annual Rehash Bash on Sunday, February 7, 1999. The time will probably be at 11:30 a.m. and the place will be determined once the medallion is found.
The Legend of Joe Medallion
Most online forums have their nuisances, and the Medallion Hunt discussion group has been, unfortunately, no exception. Flamers, ranters, potty-mouths...they all turn up now and again. Oftentimes, the troublemaker will suddenly go mum as the group moderator clams them up with magic knobs and switches at Pioneer Planet headquarters. But one young fellow (at least we presumed he was young based on his k12.edu e-mail address) was a reasonable enough flamer to NOT have posting privileges taken away. He called himself many things, but mostly he was Joe Medallion.
His name is mentioned in the past tense for the sake of consistent tense, but he's certain to be around for 1999 and beyond as his antics seem to amuse himself more than anyone else. Joe would often have conversations with himself under different monikers, usually during the school day, leaving us to wonder how our public funds were being spent and whether or not this strange young man was somewhat schizophrenic. There would be times that he seemed generally interested in following ideas about where the medallion was hidden, and there were other times when he seemed to relish in spurning the group and calling us all freaks that needed to get a life.....and then he would apologize for his behavior or blame it on one of his alteregos. It was all very confusing but fascinating as well – so we tolerated it and eventually named a Cooler Crew nonevent after him.
That nonevent, the "Joe Medallion" or "Joe," is when anyone gets a post that falls on a 0. Post #11,340 would be a "Baby Joe," but post #35,000 would be the truest of a true "Joe." The practice stems from Joe's own annoying habit of posting continuously until he would achieve a magical 0 number, followed by the exclamation "I got it!" Rather than fight it, we took it as our own and nurtured it. Maybe Joe was right.....maybe we are all freaks that need to get a life. Or maybe our cynical definition of "life" just isn't the same as his. Seeya next year, Joe.
Epilogue - by Joe Medallion himself. Sort of.
These days old Joe can still be found around these parts. Yes, he's no longer a part of the forums. He hasn't been since the Water Cooler disappeared in 2002, and ever since we've been using a pay to post site, he hasn't bothered to pay to post. However, all sites need some sort of "anonymous" user, since not everyone wants to post stories publicly as themselves. Over on Slashdot, that poster is given the name "Anonymous Coward". Here, in Joe's honor, any anonymous posts will appear to come from our own Joe Medallion.
My weekend for a dig
After six clues, I could no longer be a bystander to the medallion hunt so I packed a few things and shot across the entire state of Wisconsin to be a part of the revelry. Okay, so it wasn't so cavalier as all that, but it was pretty spur of the moment. In 1997, I began a new job in Milwaukee which prevented me from partaking in the event that I had become so fond of in 1996. I had done some childish digging near my home parks, Marydale and Como, in my preteen years, but nothing approached the zeal of the 1996 hunt at Harriet. I caught the bug and I caught it bad. This set of Web pages is evidence that I'm officially infested.
The point is that my inability to dig in 1997 was a hard thing to accept, especially since I knew the dig site, Como Park, like the hairs on my forearms. All of the clues were so obvious to me, as I had spent the better part of my maturing years in the vicinity. The hiding place was in the midst of my memories: I learned to swim across the way at Como Pool; I flew kites there; I ran cross-country for Como Park Sr. High there; I walked, ran, bussed, biked, and drove by the hiding site more days than not for 15 years of my life. And, ironically, it was the year I had to miss. The Water Cooler helped, but it just wasn't the same as feeling my extremities numb and tasting the ice of a midnight's air in a Minnesota February.
Cut to 1998. A year has passed. I'm comfortable at the Milwaukee job; enough so to casually take a Friday off on a day's notice. So it's off to the Twin Cities I race, with wife and child on board, for a rendezvous with a patch of worn snow in some park I normally wouldn't go to.
Now generally, I make a round of phone calls, visit with family, have a beer, and do any number of things when I arrive at the homestead. Having made the Wisconsin to Minnesota pilgrimage for some years as a college student at UW-Madison, certain routines had been set in a rather firm brick. But that Friday night in St. Paul just before the release of Clue 7 would be one to remember for me for its departure from the routine. I dropped the wife and child off at the in-laws for the night, stopped by my mom's for a quick chat and a shovel, and learned that all my friends were meandering about in Minneapolis somewhere. I told them I might stop by their chosen roost, which I did much past midnight, but first I had some personal matters to attend to.
And so I went to investigate a few ideas. I drove through Cherokee and Indian Mounds and past Kellogg, Mears, and Harriet. Much had been dug up already. The fair weather brought out more shovels – even when nobody really had a good, solid inkling. "Just dig," says the avid hunter.
I eventually parked the car near a tennis court just beneath the watchful cyclops of the beacon tower. I worked my way to high ground and marveled at the number of flashlights zipping around the oreo patches of snow lightly sprinkled with dug-up earth. I picked a spot between three trees, marked off some paces in an important sort of way, and dug in. I went like this until my bit of steam had been completely panned and then I kind of just rested on my shovel and looked out over downtown St. Paul. It was a truly magical moment that I will never forget. Because, you see, it's not really the prize that I do it for, but the communal nature of the event and the shared wonder of the lesser twin, St. Paul. Born and raised, it will always be "home." The medallion hunt gives me an excuse to explore it.....with a little extra incentive for the Golem in us all.