AUGUST 4, 2019 – The next day was another hot, sunny day. Starting around 10:00 in the morning, we jumped on our bikes and patrolled the beach end of Rice Street. Occasionally we’d take a spin around the block. By 11:00 a sizable crowd of swimmers and sunbathers had gathered. Time to strike.
I felt an adrenaline rush. Bobby and I were about to be famous. We’d “discover” the clay rocks and “announce” our discovery to all the beach-goers. Like thumbtacks to a magnet, the crowd gather around us and marvel at our amazing “find.” We’d wind up on the front page of the next weekly issue of The Anoka County Union. Only after our glory, I imagined, would “experts” declare that our stones were “post-history.” But so what. How were Bobby and I supposed to know they were fakes? We’d be merely the kids to uncovered them.
Miraculously, the twigs were still sticking up out of the sand. “You go wading in the river,” I told Bobby on the sly, as we kicked off our shoes. “I’ll uncover the clay and yell to you that I’ve found old rocks with writing on them. That’s when you run up to me and act surprised. Then I’ll read the writing out loud for everyone to hear.”
In the event, it was all a very big bust. Amidst the noisy beach scene, no onepaid us any attention—except the two teenage girls who were sitting on towels close by our discovery site. They interrupted their gossip long enough to cast annoyed looks at us, then continued their chatter.
I stuffed the rocks into my pockets and said “Let’s go,” to Bobby.
No one in my family knew anything about my lame idea or even lamer execution of it. When my mom asked on day what had happened to all the modeling clay, I shrugged my shoulders and said, “I dunno.”
Years later, during my freshman year of college, I wrote a paper about the Kensington Runestone. As part of my research I found that old American Heritage article, the footnotes to which led to other sources. I studied thoroughly all of the sources and even called home and consulted my dad, who, no surprisingly, was himself an expert on the subject. The simple question posed by my paper was whether the stone was a hoax. Based on exhaustive scholarship, I argued that it was. Besides, based on my own experience with “river rocks,” I knew something of what I was talking about.
© 2019 Eric Nilsson
