Their first day of summer vacation happened to be a Saturday. Todd showed up at Brian's house around 8:30 am. They hung around on the front porch for a while, trying to figure out what to do, but they had no idea what this particular Saturday actually held for them.
They decided to hop on their bicycles, start riding, and see where they would wind up. They soon found themselves near the old paper mill, which had been closed down for the past 15 years. They lived in a small town where there were not many big businesses, and the few that once thrived, had fallen by the wayside over the years. They parked their bikes and began exploring. Even though they had been inside many times before, somehow the intrigue of an abandoned building never got old. After roaming around the ruins of the paper mill for about an hour, they decided to continue their Saturday morning adventure. Back on their bikes, they headed towards Johnson's Woods.
Johnson's woods was a massive piece of heavily wooded property which had once been owned by Albert Johnson. Albert had passed away many years before the boys were born and the property was inherited by Albert's children, who lived out of state and payed little to no attention to the property. They had bigger fish to fry, with their city living lifestyles. So the woods were basically a playground for the kids around town.
When they reached the woods, they dropped their bikes and started on their way. As Brian and Todd roamed the thick brush, imagining themselves as cowboy and Indians, cops and robbers, and Robin Hood and his Merry Men, they stumbled across something peculiar. The sun happened to hit what looked like a very small, shiny, piece of metal, submerged firmly in the ground. The boys tried to pull it out but it was packed too tightly for them. They grabbed a couple of small tree branches and began to try to dig around it and quickly discovered that the more they dug, the bigger and deeper this thing got. They decided to ride home and sneak a couple of their dad's shovels out, rode back and continued their digging. As they dug deeper and deeper, what had caught their eye a little while earlier, seemed to be the headlight of a car, an old car. They thought that was pretty neat, but decided they should head home. It was getting near dinner time and didn't want their parents asking any questions. This was a pretty cool discovery the two sleuths wanted to keep under raps.
The following day, their two families were getting together for a backyard BBQ at Brian's house. Brian and Todd's dad's were standing around the grill, cooking up burgers and hot dogs, discussing the current baseball season and their dreams of being business owners, out from under the thumbs of their bosses. Maybe someday. Their wives were getting the table, baked beans, and potato salad ready, and discussing the latest town gossip and the new beauty parlor, in town, while Brian, Todd, and their siblings played badminton in the yard. Everyone was having a wonderful time and for a moment or two, Brian and Todd weren't giving their discovery much thought. However, when they all sat down to lunch, their dad's happened to bring up an old story they had heard many times from older town residents. As the two men tried to remember the details, the tale emerged for the first time, for Brian and Todd.
As the story goes, there were two gangsters back in the late 1920's. They were brothers who had taken the wrong path in life, obviously, because of their chosen profession. Their names were Jack and Jimmy Maddox. They had a fairly normal childhood, according to lore, but dropped out of school at any early age and in order to help support their parents measly incomes, they began to pull small robbery jobs. Soon, they realized that they were quite good at this new found money making scheme and began promoting themselves to bigger and bigger jobs. To make a long story short, in 1928 they pulled their biggest heist yet, the Cornville First Bank and Trust. This was a long time savings and loan and very respected institution. I suppose their confidence level must have been very high in going for such a prestigious establishment for their first bank job... and as it turned out, it would be their last.
The robbery, itself, went off just fine. Just as planned, without a hitch. However, they didn't expect their getaway to fail as it did. Oh, they got away, alright, but they didn't get far enough. They made it as far as old Johnson's woods and were able to bury their Model A, yes, the entire car, which was quite a feat in and of itself, and supposedly, the briefcase of stolen loot went in the ground with it. Though their seems to be no one living who ever actually saw that briefcase. As of this year, 1955, it's a theory, a myth, hopefully to be proven or disproven by these two, 11 year old gumshoes, if in fact, what they have discovered is the actual car that their dad's were speaking about. And what of the Maddox boys? Well, after successfully burying their getaway car, the two were still on the lamb and had no choice but to continue their getaway on foot. They evaded cops for two days, but when discovered, they made their last stand in a subsequent and historical shoot out, and lost. No one was ever able to get any information on the car or the money.
As you can imagine, the boys were fixated as their dad's were spinning this exciting tale. They would look at each other every few minutes, and with a sort of mental communication, they were letting each other know that they would speak of their discovery to no one. It wasn't until the following Saturday that they were able to get back to the woods and their excavation. That was the longest week of their life!
Saturday morning, bright and early, they were back at it... and what they found was stunning!
To be continued...
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