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In the 1950's, in the neighborhood where we grew up, there was an abandoned house. A man by the name of Billy Frye had lived there. When he passed away, evidently there were no relatives that wanted the house, so it just sat there. The yard was so grown up, the house could hardly be seen from the street. We always thought it was haunted. Of course, we were not allowed to go in it.
There was an empty field next door to the haunted house with some apple trees and a pear tree, and even some grape vines that had the best blue grapes. Playing right next door like that was always very tempting for us to get a little closer.
There came a day, however, being the little vandels that we were, that we disregarded our orders and got really brave (or stupid, depending on your point of view) and decided to explore the house.
It was apparent there was a basement under the house, as we could see the open door on the side facing our field, so that was where we started. There were some old stone steps leading down to the door, and much to our disgust, we discovered the largest rat we'd ever seen. It had front teeth at least a half an inch long! It was dead, but not for long, as it hadn't started to stink yet. We wondered if there were more. We poked our heads into the basement, but it was really dark in there. No one had a flashlight, so we decided that was enough there. Let's press on to the upstairs.
There was a door on the back of the house leading into what might have been the woodshed, and with a little force was soon open and we slinked in. It became apparent that we weren't the first intruders. Things that had been left there were overturned and/or broken. As I recall there was a porcelin kitchen table with some dirty broken dishes still on it. Naturally everything was covered with a quarter inch of dust.
We found some stairs leading to the second floor. Things were in the same shape up there. I remember a table with a lamp that had these glass teardrop like dodads hanging from the shade. Of course some were missing.
Then we discovered it! It was a piece of pale green something. It looked like glass, but, it was shaped like it had been melted. No sharp edges, just a blob of hard green glass. Of course, to us it must be an emerald at least, and probably worth lots of money!
Oh boy! A treasure! Just what we were looking for. We scooped up our booty and beat a hasty retreat.
When little boys aren't cowboys or indians, they are usually pirates. What do pirates do with the treasure? They bury it in a safe place naturally. Well, the pirate in us came out, and after we looked at the treasure for a while, we decided to bury it in the field in back of our house. We dug a hole a foot or so deep, wrapped up our treasure, and lovingly placed it in the hole. We marked the spot with a small tree.
Then after taking an oath of silence, we went home, happy in the knowledge that we had treasure safely tucked away.
A week or so later, we wanted to look at our treasure, so we got the shovel and went back to the spot. After frantically digging all around our marker tree, we had to admit it. Our treasure was GONE!
Where it went, I'll never know. I suspected that maybe one of the guys went back and dug it up, but, everyone claimed they had no idea where it went. There's always the possibility it wasn't glass, and melted from the moisture in the ground. But, if that's so, where did the wrapping go?
So ends The Mystery of The Green Jewel.