Two treasures of a different sort that were stored in a basement and a fish shack, respectively, have recently surfaced.
One of the items has since created more questions than answers, while the other has been returned to the best-selling author who painted on it in the first place.
While waiting in a doctor's office, Irene (Mantyla) Giuffre of Rockport thumbed through a magazine. She soon stumbled upon an ad promoting Australia and showing a string of golden pearls.
That made her remember she also had a string of white, pearllike beads that her grandfather, Daniel Mantyla, a dairy farmer and Lane's Cove fisherman, had given her before he died in 1932.
"I said, 'I have to find out what they are,'" Giuffre explained.
Giuffre first caught sight of the string of beads at her grandparents' house at 10-A Langsford St. in Lanesville as a little girl. She regularly walked there from her home on Morgan Avenue for a very specific reason.
"My mother wouldn't let me drink coffee, but my grandmother used to tell me: 'I'll give you a little bit of coffee,'" Irene said.
Her grandfather took the beads with him every time he seasonally fished for lobsters and cod and hake out of a hand-rowed dory and hung it up on a hook in the kitchen at day's end. Giuffre remembers her grandmother telling her, "Daniel put all those (60 beads) on a string."
The beads were strung together by ordinary string that runs through a center hole in each bead. We later e-mailed a photo of the string of beads to Lanesville historian and author Barbara Erkkila.
"I think you are looking at a string of wampum the Indians used in buying," she responded. The literature describes wampum in part as, "... a string of white shell beads fashioned from the North Atlantic channeled whelk shell and is traditionally used by indigenous Americans, First Nations peoples, Native Americans, hobbyists, business people and traders, who regarded it as sacred or a trade representative of the value of the artist's work."
It further states, "Wampum beads are traditionally made by rounding small pieces of the shells of whelks, then piercing them with a hole before stringing them."
Giuffre's string of beads raises many questions.
Did her grandfather make the beads and, if so, from what mollusk species? The North Atlantic channeled whelk does not live off Cape Ann, but Irene remembers her grandparents "... used to collect shells."
Unlike the channeled whelk, the mollusks that inhabit local waters are relatively thin-shelled. Many of the beads are the size of a small marble.
If he didn't make them, where did he get them from? Daniel Mantyla didn't drive, and he didn't leave Lanesville. Much of his time was spent at Lane's Cove.
He also had cows, and the cow barn was at the home site. Lastly, why did he take these out fishing?
About three weeks ago, Pigeon Cove Harbor lobsterman Jack Ketchopulos threw down a 7-by-14-inch orange-colored, bullet-shaped buoy from the loft of his fish shack.
He soon called me over and said, "Take a look at this," pointing to a swordfish painted on it in black along with the words "Linda's Lucky Ball."
Ketchopulos had purchased about 80 of the orange buoys from the distant-water swordboat, Hannah Boden, after it had stopped swordfishing in the 1990s. Ketchopulos noticed this special float mixed in with the others, and he put it aside with the intent of some day crossing paths with Linda Greenlaw, who captained the Hannah Boden, and returning it to her, since he figured it was hers.
"I didn't have the heart to paint over this buoy," Ketchopulos said. He later made hi-fliers and lobster buoys out of most of the others.
"I didn't do it; Linda probably did," said Tom "Ringo" Ring from Beverly, a former crewman on the Hannah Boden and now a gillnet fisherman, who recently examined the float. Ring soon helped Ebb & Flow reach Greenlaw, who resides on Isle Au Haut off Maine, where she lobsters and writes. Greenlaw wrote the best-selling mystery, "Slipknot," a cookbook with her mother, "Recipes From a Very Small Island," as well as three nonfiction books — "The Hungry Ocean," "All Fishermen are Liars" and "The Lobster Chronicles."
"If 'Linda's' has an apostrophe, the buoy was mine," Greenlaw said. The buoy did have an apostrophe. She also was e-mailed the photo of Ringo holding the buoy that's in the paper. Greenlaw later e-mailed us the story behind the lucky ball.
It reads: "It's a long steam to the fishing grounds east of Newfoundland, and the crew usually has some very creative ways to entertain themselves. I recall contests, pools, games, outlandish stories of landlocked exploits and practical jokes played on the 'green guy.'
"The float was part of an entertainment package. Each member of my crew selected and painted a personal float to mark their single baited hook each night in the 1,000 hooks set over the distance of 40 miles. Whoever caught the biggest fish on their ball was rewarded with bragging rights. Of course, the men would watch bird activity, water color and baitfish to select the most opportune time to launch their ball and hook, and would choose bait, depth and lightstick color, too. I had the advantage of seeing the current break and water temperature with electronics, while the guys were on deck, so I usually won."
The special float has already been shipped to her, and she should have it by the time this story is printed.
Meanwhile, Greenlaw wrote back, "Thanks so much for contacting me and sending my lucky ball, which has surfaced after many years — much to my delight. That ball served me well for many trips."
