Clank.
That is the sound of a hoe or shovel hitting something. A sound, starting Jan. 30, that every man, woman and child who tills the snowbanks of St. Paul in search of the King Boreas medallion will be listening for. Hoping for. Aching for. Dreaming of. Above all else.
Oh, they may not know that that's what they're after. They may tell themselves and their loved ones that they hunt for other reasons. That they bundle up in below-zero weather to stand out in the middle of a field in the middle of the night with a miner's helmet or camping lantern or flashlight with hundreds of other lost souls to commune with nature.
They may say it is part of the Minnesotan experience. They may philosophize about it, saying that in their search for the medallion, they find themselves. They may say that the reason they storm Cedar Street just before midnight to buy the next day's newspaper isn't for the newest clue, but for a ritual that hearkens to a more romantic time, when people stood in line to buy newspapers.
Some might say they do it for the party -- that a Thermos full of cocoa or something stronger is a way to strike up lifelong friendships with fellow crazies. But those are novices. Anyone who has ever hunted for the medallion knows that the search is serious business, and therefore an extremely quiet undertaking -- save for the constant, eerie sound of mass chipping that fills the night.
Some might even say they do it for the money, that what drives them is the $4,000 that goes to the medallion finder, and the promise of a warm-weather reprieve from this God-forgotten Siberia.
Stuff like that. But if they say any of that, they will be lying, because what they really want, deep down, is the Clank. After that, it's all downhill. Sure, they will go to the newspaper and collect their money. Their picture might appear on TV and in the paper the next day, and their name added to the list of 111 other hunters who have found the medallion since 1952. But all the glory, all the money, is nothing compared to the Clank.
Of course, though I have done my time searching for the medallion, I have never experienced the thrill of the Clank. So the other day, I went out in the backyard and simulated it. I taped an old compact disc to a pop can and buried it. I used my boots to mat the snow around the immediate area, replicating a well-trampled search site in its final hour. Then I got a hoe from the garage. This is what it felt like:
I dragged the tool in a slow, sweeping motion, sifting the powder. When the Clank came, the can popped up and the CD saluted. My fingers tingled, and a shiver went through my arms straight up to the stem of my brain. Then I tried it on my knees, with a garden spade. Sift, sift, money. The Clank was even more electric this time, and one can only imagine what it feels like to have dug for hours, days, and to finally feel the genuine Clank.
Yours truly will not have a shot at that feeling, because the paper sponsors the hunt and Pioneer Press employees are forbidden to participate. But said employee status gives me license to do the next best thing. I can call up some of the previous winners and ask them what it feels like when the Clank comes.
"Oh, boy," said Art Jensen, 87, of Roseville, who found the first medallion in Cherokee Park in 1952. "I was more excited than you can imagine. When I hit it with my shovel, it just rolled over -- a painted face on a metal chest. I brushed it off and it said 'Dispatch and Pioneer Press.' A squad car was passing by, and he gave me a ride downtown to the paper with the siren going."
"It was the greatest thing that ever happened in our lives," said Cookie Howard, who found the medallion in Battle Creek Park with her friends Rachel Olson and Kay Anderson in 1995. "We'd hunted for it for 30 years. Rachel found it; she was using a shovel. It was in a little knit bag, and she said that when she hit it, it just made a click."
"It never made a noise," said Tom Opatz, who found the medallion with his brother Dan and their fellow White Bear Lake buddies Phil Sinn and Mark Nicklawski at Hidden Falls Park in 1993. "The handle of my shovel came off, so I was digging with the end of my shovel. And there was one little piece of snow that hadn't been touched. So I said, 'Alright, I'll just check here and then go shoot the breeze with my brother.' When I hit it, it was in a little white diaper."
"I didn't believe we actually had it, because we've been looking for it since we were kids," said Nicklawski. "When we found it, we just started running back to the car, and everyone else was running the other way. We told one guy not to bother, that we found it, and he said, 'No you didn't.' I was wearing a green hat, and I said, 'Oh, yeah? Just watch for this hat on TV.' "
Last year, the medallion was buried in Como Park. Rick Brown of Woodbury found it wrapped in a bandanna in a Curad bandage box. Everybody knows what kind of noise a shovel on a Curad bandage box makes.
"The snow was so deep, it just sort of popped out," said Brown. "It was real exciting. I grew up in St. Paul, and I heard about it every year but I never thought I'd actually find it. It was amazing. I still can't believe it, even now."
Copyright 1998 Pioneer Press.
