SOME FOLKS JUST HAVE a natural talent for finding things. I don’t. My favorite tie hides in the closet until Cindy brings it to me. Those blue socks remain hidden on top of the whites. There is never a nut to fit the bolt. I’ve no talent for finding. Uncle Andy was a finder.

Uncle Andy had a huge collection of Indian “arrowheads” he had found. He knew all the good finding places around Mount Vernon. The best, the very best, Uncle Andy said was the Brocks’ cornfield east of town. Best time for arrowhead finding is early spring. If the land has been plowed the autumn before, then the freezing and thawing of winter will have exposed arrowheads for even the blindest of hunters.

So this fine spring Saturday, Uncle Andy said, “Saddle up, Jimmy—we’re gonna go find arrowheads at Mr. Brock’s.” (“Saddle up” had nothing to do with a horse — it was just Uncle Andy’s way of telling us to get ready to go.)

I could see arrowheads by the score from my seat in Uncle Andy’s car. Well, I thought I could, anyway.

Uncle Andy drove his Model B Ford out the Toll Road to Mr. Brock’s farm, parked by his old cornfield. The land had been plowed in the fall, passed through the snow and rain, freezing and thawing of our winter. Uncle Andy explained again that this would have bared our arrowheads, left them on the surface clean, shining and begging to be picked up.

I could see arrowheads by the score from my seat in Uncle Andy’s car. Well, I thought I could, anyway. So we started tramping across that cornfield, Uncle Andy slightly behind me and to my left. The flash of arrowheads I had seen from the car turned out to have been all wishful thinking—plenty of flint chips but no arrowheads.

“Wait, Jimmy,” Uncle Andy said. I turned around. Uncle Andy was pointing to my trail. Right in the middle of my footprint was beautiful little bird point—white and perfect. We wandered on across the field. Uncle Andy pointed out all the flint chips, told me how the Indians had made their tools, how the old men sat around their fires and chipped away at their flints.

Uncle Andy found another point, not quite so perfect as the first, and down by the creek, a piece he called a mortar. Mortars, Uncle Andy said, were used to grind corn into cornmeal.
I went out with Uncle Andy many times hunting arrowheads. He nearly always found an arrowhead or some other sort of artifact. I never found a one, not a single one.

I still look for arrowheads.

Some day I’ll maybe find one.