Believe me, if I knew who was responsible for this year's treasure hunt clues I would turn the pretentious fop over to the public, maybe for a hanging or stoning. OK, I admit that's a bit strong, but I'd still like to see a representative of the Pioneer Press placed in the stocks at, say, Grand Old Day.
They don't tell us who writes the clues and they don't tell us where the treasure is hidden and we are forbidden to look for it. You know all that.
But just because I can't look for it doesn't mean I don't follow the action. Why, years ago, before I was an employee, I considered myself a veteran and spent many a treasure-hunt week looking under mailboxes and kicking at snow chunks and setting up my transit in Mounds Park. Once, when I was but a wee curmudgeon, I lost my glasses in Como Park. My mother found them and triumphantly exclaimed, "I've got them!'' which was misinterpreted by the treasure hunters who turned and started marching on her like villagers from a Frankenstein movie.
"No,'' she cried, holding up the spectacles, "I've got his glasses.''
No sir, there aren't many cities in the world where in the middle of winter thousands of otherwise reserved people take to the parks with leaf blowers and metal detectors to find a medallion that used to be hidden in a quaint little treasure chest but can now turn up attached to anything.
In fact, a guy called me the other day and told me that a few years ago, when the medallion was in a diaper, his wife had the exact diaper in her hand and said to him, "for Pete's sake, you'd think that somebody would have at least thrown this diaper in a trash can.'' She dropped it in the snow where she found it, not only blowing the treasure, but her own counsel.
I'll give you the first three clues this year and their explanations. In the early going the clues are vague and I suppose the author can get away with anything. But in Clue No. 4 you get something about "the coldest star will guide you far,'' only to discover in Friday's explanation that the coldest star referred to the Star of the North, or L'Etoile du Nord, the name of a French immersion school a couple of blocks from Como Park.
Give me a break.
OK, OK, maybe the veteran treasure hunters thought that was fair game. And I realize that with metal detectors, leaf blowers, cell phones and hand-held Global Positioning devices now used in the hunt there is some responsibility to ratchet up the difficulty. But for God's sake, in the old days at clue No. 4 you were at least in the ballpark, getting something about the charcoal pit next to the picnic table.
I had myself convinced that the hunt was going to turn on Clue No. 5:
Treasure hunt lifer, prepare to cipher.
This one's yours to keep.
Was it two or three, they seem not to agree
When St. Paul made a great leap.
Did you read the explanation for that one? It turns out that "two or three" referred to 1872 or 1873, meaning the year that Como became a park. And that leap referred to Feb. 29, 1872, leap day, when the Legislature authorized the purchase of the land that became Como.
I hope we have one those employee assistance programs where the author of that clue can be checked for hallucinogenic drug use.
The other middle clues got worse, gibberish about someone named Ann Bilansky convicted of killing her husband, Stanislaus. She hid out near the area in 1859 and was helped by some carpenter named John Walker. Oh, forget it, it was too preposterous to continue.
I take it that the treasure hunters now realize that the gauntlet has been thrown and that next year your crew better have on board back at headquarters a Web-savvy history nut ready to fire up the search engines on everything from murder and mayhem to pioneer legislatures. This ain't your father's treasure hunt.
Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5474. Soucheray is heard from 2 to 5:30 p.m. weekdays on KSTP AM 1500.
Copyright 2003 Pioneer Press.